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Duke University Libraries 


https://archive.org/details/eschatologyofjesO1 muir 





fee PE SCHATOLOGY 
Chee SUS 


OR 


THE KINGDOM COME AND COMING 


A BRIEF STUDY OF OUR LORD'S 
APOCALYPTIC LANGUAGE IN 
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 


Delivered under the ‘‘Constitution of the 
A. B. Bruee Leetureship’’ in the United Free 
Chureh College, Glasgow, by Rev. LEWIS A. 
MUIRHEAD, B.D., Minister of St. Luke’s Chureh 


C 


NEW YORK 
A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON 
3 AND 5 West 187 STREET 


1904 


Dee TL 

















IN MEMORIAM SACRAM 


ALEXANDRI BALMAIN BRUCE, D.D., 
_ SCIENTL NOVI TESTAMENTI 
IN 
COLLEGIO GLASGUENSI 
LIBER ECCLESLE SCOTICANA PROFESSORIS, 


AB AN. MDCCCLXXV AD AN. MDCCCXCIX, 


DOCTI, DILECTI, DESIDERATI, 
IN REBUS PRAESENTIBUS 
POTIUS QUAM 
IN PR2TERITIS 

a 
VERA QUERENTIS, 
DISCIPULUS MAGISTRO, 
IPSI DISCIPULO, 
HUNC DEDICAVIT LIBELLUM, 
UNUS EX 
PERMULTIS QUI, ILLIUS 
FRETI AUXILIO, 
INTUEBANTUR 
GLORIAM DEI 


IN 


HOMINE, JESU 


SAG - 





EXCERPT FROM THE “DEED OF CONSTITUTION 
OF THE BRUCE LECTURESHIP.” 


“THE object of the Lectureship shall be to promote the study of 
the New Testament among those who have passed through the 
usual theological curriculum in the Glasgow College of the United 
Free Church of Scotland. The Lectureship shall be given for 
three years ordinarily to an a/wmnus of the College at Glasgow. 
The Lecturer shall be required, during his tenure of office, to 
deliver three or four Lectures in the College to the New Testament 
Classes on such subject as may have received the approval of the 
Trustees. The intention is that in these Lectures original con- 
tributions should be made, or, at least, the result of original work 
given, with a view to the promotion of New Testament learning ; 
all branches of New Testament Science, Philological, Historical, 


and Doctrinal, to have equal consideration.” 





AUTHOR'S PREFACE: 


HE excerpt from the ‘‘ Deed of Constitution 
of the Bruce Lectureship,” given above 
(p. vii), explains sufficiently the genesis of this 
book; but it does not justify the act of pub- 
lishing. For the latter, therefore, I am alone 
responsible. I have acted in the belief that 
the publication of the Lectures would be accept- 
able to the Trustees of the Lectureship, and a 
suitable, though insufficient, acknowledgment of 
their generous confidence in appointing, as first 
Lecturer under the Trust, one who possesses 
no claim to such an honour, beyond what he 
shares with very many,—that of reverent affec- 
tion for his first and best theological teacher, 
and of a genuine interest in the study of 
the New Testament, especially the Synoptic 
Gospels. 
It seemed right also that the young theological 


1x 


Fe Ae ee 
, am rf A 


. AUTHOR’S PREFACE 


students, for whom mainly the Lectures were 
intended, should have the opportunity of reading 
in full what could actually be delivered only in 
part. Wishing to speak as a learner to learners, 
I have thought it best to retain the lecture-form. 
The book is simply the manuscript, used in the 
delivery of the Lectures, printed. I have added 
some footnotes and appendixes, in the hope that 
some readers, at least, may be roused to pursue 
the study of an important and, in this country, 
practically new subject beyond the limits of 
these four Lectures. 

The title, Eschatology of Jesus, calls for some 
explanation. It expresses an ideal, rather than 
a performance that has been even attempted. 
Those, if there be any, who expect from the 
book the statement of a “ programme,” stamped 
with the authority of our Lord, of what is to 
happen after death, will suffer inevitable, but, 
perhaps, not altogether unprofitable, disappoint- 
ment, from its perusal. Unless I am altogether 
wrong, our Lord had less in common with an 
average Jewish apocalyptist of His time or 
before it, than we are apt to suppose. There 


AUTHOR’S PREFACE xi 


were certain great general features of Jewish 
Apocalypse, such as those I have tried to indi- 
cate in Lecture II., that appealed to Him ; but I 
have a strong impression that Jesus was not, even 
in the degree that may be predicable of His 
greatest Apostle, Paul, a Person with a “ pro- 
gramme” of what was to happen in the other 
world, or. even One, who had definite ideas as 
to the Zow or when of the collapse or trans- 
formation of this world. If I had thought it 
right to follow entirely my own inclination in 
this matter, the title I should have chosen would 
have been Jesus Revelator, or, in English, /eszs, 
The Seer. The reader will, therefore, kindly 
understand that in the title, actually chosen, the 
emphasis lies not on Lschatology, but on Jesus. 
My desire in all the Lectures has been to indicate 
not any series of events announced by Jesus as 
destined to take place in the Unseen World, 
but rather what I conceive to have been the 
attitude of mind, towards the entire range of 
subjects, commonly denoted eschatological, of 
One who knew Himself to be the Man appointed 
“to finish transgression and bring in an ever- 


wl Bo ts 
f 
Ce ye 
é Da 


xii AUTHOR’S PREFACE 


lasting righteousness.” Jesus has revealed the 
supremacy of righteousness and holy love; but I 
am not aware that He has said or done any- 
thing, that makes it less absolutely true than it 
was before He came, that ‘‘we know not what 
we shall be.” 

Even those, who accept this view of things, 
as probably true, may be disposed to complain 
that no attempt has been made to test its 
validity by a treatment in detail of sayings of 
Jesus, that seem to deal directly with. such 
subjects as Death, Judgment, Resurrection, and 
the Intermediate State. My answer is, that 
I was concerned to present certain aspects of 
a great subject, which I believe to be of pecu- 
_liarly urgent interest to the modern student of 
the Gospels, and that it was hardly possible to 
do more, than has been attempted, within the 
limits of four Lectures. If this little book were 
fortunate enough to encounter a demand much 
beyond the present issue, I should gratefully 
recognise in the circumstance a call to attempt 
a treatment of the subject, that might be, in at 
least some ways, worthier of the title. 


AUTHOR’S PREFACE xiii 


I have tried in the text and footnotes to 
indicate the books, from which I have derived 
most help. I should like to add, here, that, 
in connection with Lecture I. and Lecture 
III., I am conscious of owing most to Haupt, 
whose Eschatologische Aussagen 1 venture to 
think, on the whole, the best book, that has 
been written on the subject of the Lectures. 
In regard to Lecture IJ., my principal obligations 
are to my old teacher and friend, the venerable 
Professor A. Hilgenfeld, of Jena, whose /ddzsche 
Apokalyptik remains, after forty-six years, the 
standard work on the subject of Jewish Apoca- 
lypse. In regard to Lecture IV., I have learnt 
most from Fiebig’s Der Menschensohn, Jesu Selbst- 
bezerchnung, and I desire, so far as it may be 
necessary, respectfully to commend the work of 
this, evidently young but exceedingly competent, 
Aramaic scholar to those of his English-speaking 
contemporaries, who are better able than I am 
to judge of its merit from a strictly philological 
standpoint. 

For other matters connected with the book, 
I owe many thanks to many friends for much 


xiv AUTHOR’S PREFACE 


unsought but generously given encouragement. 
I desire, among my own contemporaries, to 
mention especially my almost life-long friend, 
the Rev. James T. Ferguson, of Cupar, Fife, 
and the friend of us both, Professor T. B. 
Kilpatrick, of Winnipeg, Canada, both of whom, 
in connection with these Lectures, have done 
me the rare service of giving unasked counsel, 
such as I have found it altogether good to follow. 
I desire to express my thanks to the Trustees 
of the Bruce Lectureship, especially to my former 
colleague in Broughty Ferry, Professor James 
Denney, to whose unfailing kindness and cour- 
tesy towards a temporary usurper of his profes- 
sorial chair I owe most that was pleasurable in 
the experiences, in Glasgow, of the first Bruce 
Lecturer. Among my juniors I desire especially 
to mention my dear friend, the Rev. F. J. Rae, 
of Newport, Fife, to whom I owe the suggestion, 
embodied in the ‘Contents and Summary,” and 
the Rev. A. Morris Stewart, of Arbroath, who 
revised the printed proofs of the Lectures with 
a care, equalled only by that which Mr. Ferguson 
bestowed upon the manuscript. 


AUTHOR’S PREFACE xv 


These Lectures were written in the highlands 
of Perthshire, during a summer holiday in 
August 1903; and I desire, in publishing them, 
to remember the kindness, if I may not mention 
the name, of an “elect lady” of those parts, 
who enabled me to do the necessary desk-work 
in circumstances of quiet and comfort, which, but 
for her gracious forethought, would have been 
impossible. 

My sincere thanks are due to the Publisher 
for the unfailing courtesy and patience, with 
which he has met the demands of an unusually 
troublesome author. 


BROUGHTY FERRY, 
January 1904. 


CONTENTS AND SUMMARY. 


LECTURE I. 
PAGES 
3) Jo 


3-12 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 
INTRODUCTION 


The Subjects of the Lectures. 
General Subject : the Apocalyptic Element in the Gospels. 
General Problem: how reconcile Eschatology and Ethics 

of Jesus ? 
J. Weiss’s Predigt Jesu, interesting but paradoxical. 
Yet raises Questions not to be evaded. 

~~ Did Jesus hold the Ideas as well as use the Language of 

Apocalypse ? 
Examples of the Problem, broadly stated . : af) TONE 
This Lecture states the Presuppositions of our Enquiry— 

I. Critical Presuppositions, Synoptic Problem—Pro- 
bability. 
II. Presuppositions relating to Evangelists—Fact. 
III. Relating to Jesus—Moral Certainty. 


I. WE ASSUME AS PROBABLE : : : Oy) eee 

1. Double Origin Hypothesis, Primitive Mark, and Zogéa. 13-15 
Differences between Matthew and Luke. 
And of both from Mark. 

2. No Synoptic Gospel necessarily later than 80 A.D. 2) E5=18 
Mark and Matthew considerably earlier. 
Priority means, as a rule, greater Accuracy in Minutiz. 
Example in three Accounts of the Voice at Baptism. 

3. The Fourth Gospel uniquely Valuable . 2 . 18-21 
Even with reference to the History of Jesus. 
But contains rather Discourses than Incidents. 





XViii CONTENTS AND SUMMARY 


The Discourses rather reflective Reproductions than 
Reports. 

Hence this Gospel only of Secondary Value in a Study 
of the Words of Jesus. 


II. WE ASSUME AS FACT . . . 
v 1. Separate Eschatological Soke in Syaaghe Gospels 
bear stamp of Accurate Reports . : 


They are Parabolical, Paradoxical, and Pictoual 
Sometimes also Definite and apparently Fallacious 
Promises. 
Instances of the latter: Matt. x. 23, xvi. 28. 
Principle: the more Definite the Unfulfilled promise, 
the Truer the Report. 

2. Arrangement of Eschatological Sayings often Erroneous 
Illustrated in the passage, Luke xvii. 20-xviii. 8. 
Incoherent Sequences to be ascribed to Evangelists, 

not to Jesus. 

3. The Evangelists misunderstand, but do not intentionally 


misrepresent . 

—. The feeling of the Last Time omedes the New! 
Testament. 

~~ The “Great Eschatological Discourse,” Mark xiii. 
= Matt. xxiv. 


~~ 


Report dominated by Assumption that Fall of Jeru- 
salem =End of World. 

This explains Incoherence, and also Centrality of 
part about Jerusalem. 

‘* Little Apocalypse” 
necessary. 


Theory Unproven and Un- 


III. WE ASSUME AS MORAL CERTAINTY : - 
I. Jesus’ Ignorance no Hindrance to Messianic Works 7 
Rather the Sign of His Walk by Faith. 
2. Jesus not chargeable with Intellectual Inconsistency 
Cannot be ignorant of the ‘‘ Day” and the ‘‘ Hour.” 
And yet certain that all must happen ‘‘ within this 
Generation.” 
3. Elusiveness as well as Vividness in His Sayings : 
This quality is acknowledged in His Z¢hzca/ Sayings. 
Why should it not be also in His Zschatological? 


PAGES 


21-47 


21-25 


26-35 


35-47 


47-53 
47-48 


48-50 


50-53 


CONTENTS AND SUMMARY 


LECTURE II. 


THE Main FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE CON- 
SIDERED IN THEIR AFFINITY TO THE MIND OF 
JESUs . 


INTRODUCTION 


Apocalypse and Prophecy, Seer and Prophet. 
The Prophet believes in Political Future for Israel. 
<A The Seer looks beyond the Clouds. 

Prophecy dies with Political Hopes of Israel. 

Apocalypse springs from secret Reflection and Faith. 

Jehovah Transcendent, but just ¢erefore Omnipotent. 

Why should He not arise from behind the Clouds? 

~— Instances of Main and Subsidiary Ideas of Apocalypse. 

Jesus knew the Book of Daniel, but not probably other 
Apocalypses. 

His Language shows, however, the wide Currency of 
Apocalyptic Phrases. 

We do not know how He regarded Apocalyptic Concep- 
tions in themselves. 

Vision in Him wedded to Faith in God and Righteousness. 

What /e has joined together, let #s not put asunder. 


I. APOCALYPSES ARE TRACTS FOR BAD TIMES 

Message to Godly in Despairing Nation. 

Baldensperger’s Examples. 

Book of Daniel belongs to time of Syrian Oppression under 
Epiphanes. 

The Oppressor will do worse, but his Time is coming. 


\ 


II. APOCALYPSES USUALLY PSEUDEPIGRAPHIC. : 
We do not know how Contemporaries regarded Pseud- 
epigraphy. 
No sign of offended sense of Veracity. 
Our Lord and ‘“‘the Prophet Daniel.” 
The Reason of Pseudepigraphy the Weight of the Canon. 
Pseudo-Daniel and Jeremiah’s ‘‘ Seventy Years.” 
Pseudo-Daniel’s relation to Jeremiah like Pseudo-Ezra’s to 
Pseudo-Daniel. 


X1x 


PAGES 


57-95 
57-67 


67-69 


69-76 


~ 





XX CONTENTS AND SUMMARY 


THE WEIGHTY MESSAGE EXCUSES THE FICTITIOUS 
Form 


THE GoD OF ee ras AND yee DOES CAL- 
CULATE THE TIMES . ; ; : 3 
Apocalypse marks the rise of a— 
III. New IDEA oF Gop t ; 


The Transcendent God delivers, even in the wore extremity, 
His People who keep Covenant with Him. 

Some Analogue in ‘‘ Daniel” to Jesus’ sense of the Im- 
minent Kingdom. 

The Transcendent God is, in the Gospels, the Father in 
Heaven, as sufficient for the Future as for the Present. 


IV. New IpEa oF WoRLD 

Yet only Suggestion; for even the Apocalypse thinks 
chiefly of a Holy Jewzsh State. 

Rather of wonderful Advent of Kingdom than of Kingdom 
itself. 

Yet Sphere of the Kingdom—this World. 

And this World is one, z.e., an Empire. 

The Imperial Idea a Temptation to Jesus. 

Yet also an Article of Faith. 


z- VN. New IDEA OF LIFE. 


Individual Immortality suggested ies than Guabes in the 
Old Testament. 

The Unit the Nation rather than the Individual. 

Hosea vi. 2 and Ezek. xxxvii. prophesy Resurrection of a 
Nation. 

Dan. xii. 2 almost alone in testifying Bodily Resurrection. 

The Value of the Testimony largely the absence of Re- 
flection and Convention. 

This Value is also the Limitation of the Testimony. 

The Seer does not speak of a Unzversal Resurrection. 

Or even of a Resurrection of Past Generations of Israelites. 


PAGES 


73 


75 


76-84 


84-88 


89-95 


CONTENTS AND SUMMARY xxl 


LECTURE III. 
PAGES 
THE DoctTRINE OF JESUS CONCERNING THE CONSUM- 
MATION OF THE KINGDOM, CONSIDERED IN RELATION 
To His EryicaL DocTRINE AND His MESSIANIC 
CONSCIOUSNESS. : : : : . 99-142 


INTRODUCTION . : : - : : - 99-102 
The Perplexity of Subject. 
Best View with our own Eyes. 
May we know what Jesus thought about End. 
Apart from, yet using, His Pictures ? 


“VY I. THE KinGDoM oF Gop versus THE COLLAPSING WORLD. 103-114 

Eschatology not to be dissociated from Ethics, 

Otherwise look into a blank Heaven. 

Mark xii. 13 ff. and x. 35 ff., ¢.g., to be studied along with 
Dan. vii. 

Moral Experience and Religious Faith one in Jesus. 

Our Lord’s usage ve ‘‘ Kingdom of God,” and Paul’s. 

The Kingdom is the sum of Blessings of the Supernatural 
Life of God’s Children; the Blessings are, primarily, 
Powers of Truth and Love, acting on Conscience and 
Will. 


II. THE KING versus THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD . . II4-117 
Subject belongs rather to Lecture IV. 
s==—The Messianic Consciousness of Jesus. 
— Centre of Gravity in Gospels, not Kingdom but King. 
¥ Here, if anywhere, the Solution of the Puzzle of the King- 
dom Come and Coming. 


Y III. THE KINGDOM CoME versus THE KINGDOM COMING . I17-142 
Data for Settling this Question. 


~. Crucial Question: What did Jesus teach regarding Time 
of Consummation ? 
I. Jesus could not have uttered Mark xiii. 30 and Mark 
xiii. 32 - 2 . II7-119 
In one Compass of Reference. 


XXli 





CONTENTS AND SUMMARY 


PAGES 

2. Yet no two Sayings better attested . . . 119-122 

Professor Schmiedel’s Canon ensures Mark xiii. 32. 

So also, indirectly, Mark xiii. 30. 

Latter, one of a class along with Matt. x. 23, xvi. 28, 

xxvi. 64, and parallels. 

Collective Clue necessary, and found in— 

3. Pervasive Data - 5 ; + 122-142 


(a) Actual Arrival Z/zs Imminence of es 

present to Mind of Jesus f . 122-127 

Collapse of World a Counterpart of this. 

Yet Jesus no calculating Apocalyptist. 

But said simply, He did not know the Time. 

Did He assume or privately believe, All Happen 
in this Generation ? 

Best say only, Not undermine Assumption of 
Disciples ; but note that— 

Warning against Premature Expectations a main 
Motive of Discourse in Mark xiii. 

Must still face the Saying in Mark xiii. 30. 


(4) Jesus Prophet of Woe to His Nation, especially 


Scribes and Pharisees . - 127-134 
Dealt with Religious Tecmo not Political 
Folly. 


Expressions Vivid, yet come solely from His Holy 
Messianic Spirit. 

‘‘This Generation,” ‘‘ Jerusalem Compassed,” 
etc., Plastic Expressions. 

All saying: God rejects those who reject Him. 

And this all, apart from any Conviction about the 


World. 
(c) Yet Jesus dzd attach a certain Finality to Fall of 
Jewish State . + 134-142 


In relation to whole World-_Deadly ‘Conflict 
with Religious Authorities, 

As depicted, say, in Matt.—chap. xxiii., Text ; 
and chap. xxiv., Scenery. 

Four things stand out clearly— 


a. The peculiar Favour shown to Israel. 
God’s Vineyard, to which He sent His Son, 


CONTENTS AND SUMMARY 


8. The Vineyard was Fruitless, and would be 
Destroyed. 
Jesus saw the Ruin, and pictured it. 
y. The Corruption of the Chosen People, the 
Loss of the World. 
Hence, in some sense, its Collapse. 
0. Nevertheless, His Death would ransom 
World. 
Men of ¢at Generation would see Redemp- 
tive Power at work. 
Not many ZLogza about this. 
The Word was in His Heart, and the Deed 
in His Death. 


LECTURE IV. 


XXIil 


PAGES 


THE TITLE “Son or Man” : : : 145-207 


INTRODUCTION . ; 5 3 F 


According to Gospels, Title used habitually and from first. 
Peculiar to Himself, and associated with Dan. vii. 13. 
Occasioned no Surprise to His Hearers. 


The Problem of the Present Day ts Threefold 


I. Could Jesus have used such a Title in Aramaic? 
II. If so, did He do it as habitually as the Gospels 
represent ? . ; A . 

III. What did He mean? . 


I. THE NEGATIVE OF LIETZMANN AND WELLHAUSEN DIs- 
CUSSED AND REJECTED 
The Negative Stated 
The Aramaic Equivalent, Bar rndishi 5 (188 Sateen, 
To be used as a Title. 
“¢Son of Man,”’ in our Gospels, due to belief that Jesus 
identified Himself with the Figure in Dan. vil. 13. 
A belief peculiarly acceptable to Greek Humanism. 
The Negative Criticised . i A 
Three General Counter-Statements, the ahd alone 
important. 


. 145-147 


- 147-148 
. 148-170 


. 170-189 
. 189-207 


. 148-170 
. 149-151 


151-170 


XXiv 





CONTENTS AND SUMMARY 


1. Only Probable, not Proven, that Jesus did not in public 
use Greek . 4 : F : = 
2. Jesus may have used Gadhra’, which occurs in a Docu- 


PAGES 


152-153 


ment that ‘‘ speaks Galilean Aramaic” (Lietzmann) 154-155 


And is not a mere synonym of Barnasha. 


We accept the Supposition that the Expression used by 
Jesus was Barnash@. 


3. The Title fundamentally a Quotation from Dan. vii. 13 155-170 


Standard, therefore, rather what could be said in second 
century B.C. than in second or first century A.D. 

Had Patronymic and Emphatic lost Significance ? 

Even in second century B.c.? Positions of Dalman 
and Fiebig. 

Dalman says: Bar’énash in Dan. vii. 13= Ben adham 
in Hebrew. 

But, apart from Ezekiel, does Hebrew ever use Ben 
*adham alone? 

Fiebig says: Bar ’énash@ in time of Daniel=“‘ the 
man.” 

But may not Patronymic have had some force in a 
solemn Apocalypse ? 


Our Main Point. 


Other than strictly Philological Considerations apply to 
Language of a Great Personality like our Lord. 


The Difficulty of alleged Ignorance of Apostolic 
Writers of any peculiar use of ‘‘son of man” 
on part of Jesus . : 2 ‘ . 


The Silence of Apostolic Writers seems surprising. 

Yet not more remarkable than Silence of Evangelists. 

Who do not once call Jesus by His own Title. 

Is this Abstinence meant to emphasise Uniqueness of 
Jesus’ usage? 

Or not rather due simply to Awkwardness of Expression 
for ordinary Ears ? 

If the latter, what of alleged Humanism ? 

Argument from Silence always Precarious. 

Moreover, Allegation of Ignorance of a Messianic ‘‘ Son 
of Man.” 


164-170 


CONTENTS AND SUMMARY XXV 
PAGES 
Seems falsified by use of Psalm viii. in Heb. ii. 5 ff., 
I Cor. xv. 27f., and Eph. i. 22. 
II. Dip Jesus say ‘‘ BARNASHA’” FROM THE FIRST, AND 
BEFORE MULTITUDE AND DISCIPLES ALIKE ? . 170-189 
General Impression of English Reader, Correct on whole ; 
but needs Modifying . . 171-178 
I. Jesus had an Impressive Way a using Third Seeds 
meaning Himself; it had an educative motive. 
2. The manner Mysterious as well as Suggestive. 
But accepted without complaint as part of the Mystery 
of Jesus. 
This general Impression does not correspond strictly 
with Facts. 
Yet is not essentially Misleading. 
It is no part of it that ‘‘ Son of Man” = Messiah. 
Partly (az), because Jesus did not proclaim Nesey 
before Czesarea Philippi. 
Partly (4), because Equation ‘‘Son of Man” 
Messiah. 
As unfamiliar to us as to Multitude of Jesus’ Day. 
Those who keep by the Gospels must hold that ‘‘ Son 
of Man” not a widely current Messianic Title. For, 
according to Gospels: (i.) Jesus said ‘‘Son of 
Man” Jdefore Ceesarea Philippi, and zrrespectzve of 
His Audience. 
Vet (ii.) was not zJso facto understood to claim 
Messiahship. 
No reason to reject either count of this Testimony. 
Barnash@ suits exactly the Twofold Necessity of the 
Situation . 178 
A. Of corresponding to the Daas ies of nese 
ship in Scripture. 
B. Of not advertiseng Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah. 
Our Key tried in the Locks of particular Passages in 
the Gospels. : : 5 : » 178-188 


Wellhausen’s rendering, @ man, suits Mark ii. 1 ff. and 
li. 27 f.—especially the parallel, Matt..ix. 2ff. Balden- 
sperger accepts ‘‘Son of Man” in these passages, but 
disputes Chronology. 


XXvi CONTENTS AND SUMMARY 





_ PAGES 
Both those in which Jesus speaks to the Multitude, 
or to Indifferent Persons . : . 178-185 
Our Key suits all the Passages, and aaa not quarrel with 
Chronology or with frequency of ‘Son of Man” in 
the Gospels. 
And those in which He speaks specially to the Disciples 185-188 
Suppose Disciples to recognise the Daniel reference at 
Ceesarea Philippi, and have Key to Disciples not wnder- 
standing Prophecy about Sufferings and Death. 
Apart from this Key, Testimony of Gospels does not look 
like Truth. 
The Result . . 188-189 
Besides man (in general), Barnasha’ had three possible 
Associations. 
1. With Jesus Himself. 
2. With the Messiah. 
3. With the Figure in Dan. vil. 13. 
First did not for Hearer necessarily imply second or 
thtrd. 
Third implied second, but not necessarily first. 
Perhaps only in Matt. xxvi. 64 three Associations, a// 
present for the Hearers of Jesus. 
III. Two QUESTIONS REMAIN . 189-207 
A. Why did Jesus use the Ghee Mode of Speech ? 
B. What did He mean by ‘‘ Son of Man” ? 

Sra A has Two Parts . . 189-194 
. Relating to Jesus Himself - 189-193 
Why not simply Z or 1, where He did not exneel or 

even desire, to be considered the Messiah ? 
The fact of the Messiahship a Revelation to Jesus 
Himself. 
Its meaning to be learnt only by continuous Revelation 
and by Faith. 
2. Relating to Disciples - 193-194 


His Reserve in speaking of MescasHis ieee attested 
in Gospels. 

Motive, to prevent Casual and Insufficient Ideas. 

Success, the Secret of the Messiahship, once attained, 
remained with Disciples in spite of Offence of Cross. 


CONTENTS AND SUMMARY XXV11 


PAGES 


westion B.—What did Jesus mean by ‘‘Son of Man?” . 194-20 
Q y 94-207 


N 


Weisse’s ‘‘ Unstamped Idea” has its own Attractive- 
ness. 

“© Son of Man” may express all our Lord is to Faith. 

Yet Phrase had to Jesus edge of definite Interest. 


. The Starting-point—Dan. vii. 13 pee not Ps. viii. or 


Appellation of Ezekiel : : - 196-198 
Jesus thinks not of Weakness of a mere man, but of 
the Man of the Future and of Glory, 


. The Contznwatzon—Jesus more than Seer in Daniel . 198-207 


His use of Old Testament selective and free. 

His ‘‘ Son of Man” as living as Jesus of Nazareth. 

And Jesus of Nazareth Searcher and Judge, like the 
“Son of Man.” 

By zhzs, measure Originality and Faith of Jesus. 

Uniting Glory with Poverty and Cross. 

The Son of His Father in Heaven by Faith and 
Obedience. 

Such as, in our measure, we may imitate, 


APPENDIXES. 
A.—LeEctTuRE I. : : ; : , ¢ 211 
B.—Lecture II. : : c : ; 3 213 
C.—Lecture IV. : : : : : : 218 
I. ‘Son of Man” in the Synoptic Gospels. . 218 


2. Lietzmann and the word Gabhra’ . ; : 219 


Fi 
’ a ~ 
ME tts wx A 

i * 








EECTURE | 





THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY. 








THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


LECTURE, fF 
THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY. 


a these four Lectures we shall be occupied 

with some aspects of the problem arising 
out of the presence in the Gospels of what is 
generally known as an eschatological or apoca- 
lyptic element ; and I ask attention in the present 
Lecture mainly to what I shall call the Pre- 
suppositions of our Enquiry. In the two subse- 
quent Lectures I shall ask your attention to the 
Main Conceptions of Jewish Apocalypse and to the 
Degree in which Apocalyptic Ideas entered into 
the Teaching of our Lord, reserving the fourth 
Lecture for the special subject of the Origin and 


Meaning of the title “‘Son of Man” considered in 
3 





4 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


the light of Recent Philological Enquiry. Re- 
membering the shortness of the time, I shall en- 
deavour to avoid what the dear Professor, of whom 
this Lectureship is a memorial, was accustomed to 
call ‘‘learned references.” I shall avoid, so far as 
possible, even citations of Scripture, and, while not 
concealing my own convictions or inferences, I 
shall aim at being suggestive rather than ex- 
haustive or dogmatic. Apart from the time 
limitation, it would perhaps be presumptuous, in 
any case, to aim at more. 

The matters, in which I should like specially to 
interest you, are not in any sense new to persons 
who are conversant with the German literature of 
the last score of years on the Messianic Self- 
Consciousness of Jesus, but they may fairly 
be called new to those who read only or chiefly 
books of British growth. The labours of V. H. 
Stanton,’ and especially of R. H. Charles in his 
valuable editions of Jewish Apocalypses, have 
done much to secure an interest in the question: 
How far Jewish modes of faith current in His 


1The Jewish and the Christian Messiah. T. & T. Clark, 
Edinburgh, 1886, 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY ‘5 


time may have influenced the language and 
thought of our Lord regarding the Kingdom of 
God—in particular regarding its consummation. 
But there is a matter closely related to this, that 
has perhaps hardly as yet secured the attention 
of English-speaking students of the Gospels. 
I mean the relation of our Lord’s eschatological 
teaching to His ethical. 

The minute attention, which scholars like 
Charles have necessarily given to the Jewish 
Apocalypses, has perhaps tended in some ways 
to exaggerate their importance in the minds 
of those who have allowed themselves to be- 
come absorbed in the study of them. On the 
whole, let it be confessed that even with the 
key of historical comment—in some cases of 
limited and dubious applicability— with which 
the experts supply us, the Apocalypses make 
rather dreary reading. There is in them the 
same iteration of the notes of warning and hope 
that characterise genuine prophecy, but the in- 
spired insight and the direct touch with life, 
which in the Prophets more than compensate for 
this monotony, are in such Apocalypses as those, 


6 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


é.g., contained in the Book of Enoch, represented 
chiefly by an insipid literalism, while the 
highly artificial literary form, to which the 
apocalyptist is bound, tends to lower the interest 
of even so great and living a book as the 
canonical Daniel to the level of an arithmetical 
puzzle. 

The solution of the puzzle absorbs an immense 
amount of time and energy. It is dubious even 
to the end. One asks: Is it worth the pains? 
Is it, I wonder, improper to suggest that the 
very barrenness of large tracts of research in 
literature of this sort has tempted some investi- 
gators to find relief in the supposition that 
the apocalyptic imagery, which undoubtedly 
entered to a very considerable extent into 
the structure of our Lord’s speech regarding 
the heavenly Kingdom, affected the substance 
of His thought and teaching to a much greater 
extent than — previously to these apocalyptic 
investigations —it was possible for a modern 
reader of the Gospels even for a moment to 
suppose ? 


Whether it is so or not, such a phenomenon 





THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 7 


as Joh. Weiss’s /esus’ Preaching of the Kingdom 
of God*—a highly readable and in many ways 
suggestive book—is certainly remarkable. “The 
main thesis of this book is that, whereas we have 
hitherto started in our study of the teaching of 
Jesus from what we considered His ethical ideas, 
making these the standard of interpretation of 
His eschatological utterances, the right method 
of procedure is rather the reverse.” The eschato- 
logical utterances represent not the circumference 
but the centre of our Lord’s mental and spiritual 
equipment, and we must learn to do justice to the 
antique realism of His thought. ~ His dominant 
idea is indeed that of the Kingdom of God.” But 
the Kingdom is a hope of the future rather than 
a possession of the present. His religious faith 
brought it near, and considered its arrival immi- 
nent ; still to the last it was something to come. 
It was to come by the power of God—a power 
which Jesus never ventured to measure by any- 
thing that was granted to Himself. Weiss’s por- 
trayal of the Gospel facts has the merit of being 
self-consistent as well as interesting. He does 


1 Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes. 2nd ed., Géttingen, 1900. 






8 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS i 


which attaches to the Kingdom of God must 


attach also to its central Figure, the Son of Man 


who comes with the clouds of heaven, and to 
whom the Kingdom is given. He also belongs 
to the future, and Weiss assures us in language, 
wholly unexceptionable in point of reverence, 
that in His deep religious humility Jesus never 
ventured even in thought (much less in speech 
before the Sanhedrin) to identify Himself with 
this heavenly One, of whom He always spoke in 
the third person. 

To a thinker, who can face such a conclusion, 
it may well seem quite a minor paradox to affirm 
that what we have been accustomed to call the 
ethical teaching of Jesus does not, so to speak, 
rest upon a basis of its own. For example, 
it is, according to Weiss, a stupid anachronism 
to find in the familiar Logzon about losing one’s 
life in order to save it the modern thought that 
self-sacrifice is the condition of self-realisation. 


All that Jesus meant to convey was that the 


Kingdom was near at hand, and that no one need ~ 


hope to participate in its blessings who did not 


ON 
ee 


not hesitate to argue that the same “ objectivity ” " 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 9 


sit loose to home and hearth and was not ready 
on a moment's notice to surrender life itself. 

I do not claim that these few sentences give 
a fair idea of the total impression which Weiss’s 
very living and instructive book makes even upon 
the reader who feels all through that the writer 
is overstating his case. Still less would I in- 
sinuate that the questions which Weiss raises 
can be settled by a mere appeal to devout 
common sense, which may be, after all, no better 
than devout common ignorance. I wish only 
(if you will allow me to say it) to create a pre- 
liminary interest in a subject—I mean the apoca- 
lyptic element in the Gospels—which, perhaps, 
has hardly, as yet, been made sufficiently accessible 
to English students of the Gospels ; and while my 
sympathies go with those who feel that Weiss’s 
main theorem cannot be true, however strong 
may be the apparent reasons for it, I feel bound 
to consider this feeling a prejudice, until it has 
received the certificate of an investigation of the 
sources of our knowledge, which does full justice 
to the facts on which Weiss bases his conclusions. 


It is obvious—to begin—that there is in the 


IO THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS ; 


Synoptic Gospels a very considerable number 
of sayings of Jesus, which, gathered into close 
array, give the student a very impressive sense 
of the extent to which His language at least was 
affected by the current phraseology of Jewish 
faith. Where there is the language, it is plausible — 
to assume that there will be also the thought. 
Moreover, even when we concede a superior 
solidity to the assumption that Jesus must have 
thought very differently, on the highest matters, 
from the mass of His fellow-countrymen and their 
learned but blinded teachers, we find ourselves 
still face to face with contradictions, for which, 
apparently, either He or our Evangelists must be 
held responsible. Did Jesus not merely prophesy 
the fall of the Jewish State, but, contrary to the 
spirit and manner of genuine prophecy, predict, 
like a soothsayer, some of the actual circum- 
stances—the siege of Jerusalem, the flight of 
the Christians to the mountains, the profanation 
and devastation of the Temple? Did He say 
that not even the Son knew the day or the hour 
of the consummation of the Kingdom, and yet, in 


the same discourse, declare that all the sure signs 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 11 


of the end would fall within that present genera- 
tion? Was it matter of course to Him that this 
world could have no future after the fall of 
the Jewish .State—in particular, of its peculiar 
religious polity? Or, in reference to all these 
matters, are we to see a greater or less degree 
of misunderstanding, or even conscious misre- 
presentation, on the part of the Evangelists? 

I state these difficulties, for the present, broadly 
and uncritically. I hope to be able to treat them 
in some detail in the third Lecture. It may 
be sufficient, for the remainder of this Lecture, 
to indicate what I have called the Presupposi- 
tions of our investigation. 

These presuppositions are of three kinds; and 
we may define them, severally, with reference both 
to their subject-matter and to the kind or degree 
of certainty which we claim for them. 

I. There are critical presuppositions regarding 
the literary relations of the Gospels—especially 
of the Synoptics—to one another. To these I 
do not attach, at the best, a greater worth than 
that of high probability. 

II]. There are presuppositions regarding the 





12 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


testimony of the Synoptics to the matter specially 
in hand, namely, the Teaching of Jesus on the Last 
Things, or the final manifestation of the Kingdom 
of God. Even should I offer less proof than 
may seem desirable, or than, in a more extended 
treatment, might be imperative, I claim for 
them, nevertheless, the worth of fact. 

III. There are presuppositions regarding the 
character of our Lord—His spiritual elevation 
and His intellectual consistency. Their truth 
is, I venture to think, not demonstrable by 
documentary evidence alone; but I claim for 
them the value of moral certainties. They have, 
that is, the kind of certainty on which sane 
and serious men are prepared to act, and to 
stake their lives. 

I. In regard to the first set of presuppositions, 
I need say little. Even if it were possible for 
me to speak with authority, it would be difficult, 
within the space at my disposal, to say anything 
about the Synoptic problem likely to help anyone ; 
and I do not think I have anything to advance 
with insistence, whose validity depends on any 
particular theory regarding the literary origin 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 13 


or relations of the Gospels. Still, as we are to 
interrogate the Gospels with some strictness on 
a matter of central importance, it is perhaps right 
that I should indicate in a general way one or 
two of the critical positions which I regard as 
in the main trustworthy, or as having, at least 
in regard to a large class of questions, the 
value of good working hypotheses. 

1. First, then, as regards the Synoptics, I 
consider that what is known as the Doubdle 
Origin [Hypothesis possesses greater probability 
than any other theory on the critical field, which 
is designed to cover the same ground. Those 
who hold this hypothesis believe that the great 
body of the literary phenomena of the Synoptics 
is best accounted for by the supposition of 
two fundamental documents, one of which was 
accessible to Mark, and both of which were 
accessible to Matthew and Luke. The one was 
a document, of which our Mark is the nearest 
extant equivalent; it may be called Primitive 
Mark. The other was a document, of which 
the main, but not exclusive, feature was that it 


recorded discourses of Jesus with greater system 


14 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


and fulness than Primitive Mark. Matthew 
and Luke had before them Primitive Mark— 
say (for practical purposes) our Mark. Both 
follow the thread of narrative in Mark with 
equal fidelity up to a certain point. Matthew 
holds it all through ; and Luke leaves it only to 
take it again.’ The differences between Matthew 
and Luke are due largely to the different uses 
they make of the Discourse Document. Matthew 
proceeds on the principle of grouping sayings of 
kindred import, regardless of the sequence of 
incidents severally connected with the sayings. 
Luke’s method is, rather, to link sayings with 
incidents. Luke, certainly (we have his own 
testimony),? and Matthew, probably, had access 
to other documents than those we have named; 
and this consideration, taken along with the 
supposition of their access to varying and more 
or less fluid cycles of oral tradition, and with 
due allowance made for the peculiarities of each 


writer, in temperament and purpose, supplies 


1 He may be said to leave it at ix. 62, and to take it again at 
XVlli. 15. 
2 Toukest- it. 





THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 15 


for a very complicated problem probably as 
comprehensive a source of solution as we are 
ever likely to possess. 

2. As to dates and time order, I see no reason 
for assigning any of the Synoptics to a date later 
than 80.4.p. Matthew may be a dozen or more 
years earlier, and Mark is earlier still. That 
the order is, thus, ark, Matthew, Luke, | regard 
as one of the most certain things in a region 
that abounds in uncertainties. This means that, 
where the student has to weigh probabilities as 
regards the minutiz of the Gospel record, he 
ought to pay peculiar deference to the testimony 
of Mark. Within limits, doubtless, the later writer 
may give a truer and fuller delineation of a 
historical subject. He may see things in better 
perspective, and have an insight, as to the 
relations of what he is describing, to the events 
of the interval between it and his own time, 
which is impossible to the more contemporary 
writer; but this has really nothing to do with 
the fact that, if we have to distinguish between 
the minutiz of two narratives of the same 


incident, we must, other things being equal, 





16 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


proceed upon the assumption that the earlier 
narrative is the more accurate representation of 
the actual facts. 

Let me, briefly, give an instance of what I 
mean, that has the advantage of bearing directly 
on a point of some real importance in our present 
study. 

All the Synoptics give an account of the 
descent of the Spirit upon Jesus in the form 
of a dove at His baptism. In Matthew and 
Luke, the incident is so told as to give the 
impression that the event was one of which 
there were, or at least might have been, 
spectators besides Jesus Himself. No doubt, 
there are traces in both narratives of the 
view that the event was specially a vision to 
Jesus. Matthew says expressly, ‘‘The heavens 
were opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit 
of God descending ;” and Luke, like Mark, makes 
the heavenly voice speak to Jesus in the second 
person. Yet, neither Matthew nor Luke is true 
to the subjective view. Matthew makes the 
heavenly voice speak in the third person: “ Thzs 
is My beloved Son,” that is, it is a voice addressed 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 17 


not zo Jesus, but to spectators regarding Jesus 
—testifying, in fact, to His Messiahship. Luke 
preserves the second person in the words of the 
heavenly voice; but in his account of the descent 
of the Spirit he introduces the words ‘in bodily 
shape’ (copatixé elder) ; that is, while Luke is quite 
sure that the event was a vision of Jesus, he 
cannot but figure it to himself as also objective 
and sensible. The cay. ¢ié. is, in fact, his way of 
expressing what of course is true in idea: /¢ 
came not for His sake only, but also for ours. 
Going beyond the Synoptics, we find ob- 
jective representation also in John. Indirectly 
indeed, but quite plainly, this Evangelist intimates 
that the descent of the Spirit on Jesus was 
witnessed by the Baptist, and was, in fact, the 
sign by which the latter recognised Him as the 
One who was to come.* Thus we have a three- 
fold witness (Matthew, Luke, John) to an 
objective, visible and audible, miracle wrought 
at the baptism of Jesus. Yet, quite apart from 
any scepticism regarding the possibility or 
likelihood of sensible miracles, and with full 


1 John i. 32f. 





18 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


recognition of the inspired skill of the three 
younger Evangelists in turning the incident of 
the Baptism to the immediate edification of 
their readers, I cannot, for my part, hesitate to 
assign the palm, in point of accuracy, to the 
simple and self-consistent narrative in Mark, 
according to which the descent of the Spirit in 
the form of a dove was a vision granted only to 
Jesus Himself. 

It is probably true that there is in all the 
Gospels, more or less, what may be called a 
preaching element—a certain plus of edifying 
comment, lifting us adove, if not away from, the 
literal original fact; but it is one among many 
signs that in Mark, more than in any of the 
other Evangelists, the preacher is sunk in the 
historian; that he, alone of the Evangelists, 
tells the story of the preliminary Consecration 
of Jesus in a way perfectly consistent with the 
fact that His Messiahship remained a secret, 
even to the disciples, until the day when the 
Master Himself drew it from their heart of 
hearts, at Caesarea Philippi. 

3. I shall add to this critical creed, one other 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 19 


article. It relates to the Fourth Gospel. It 
might seem, at a first view, as if this Gospel had 
a. special claim on the attention of those who 
would investigate the Messianic consciousness 
of Jesus. It is pre-eminently the Gospel of the 
mind of Christ. It not only contains eschato- 
logical matter, it is pervaded with it—in a 
form singularly free from local and temporal 
elements. It moves in an atmosphere in which 
questions as to the attitude of Jesus to Jewish 
ideas and hopes seem irrelevant. Even the 
phrase ‘“‘ Kingdom of God” hardly occurs. There 
are but the two powers—Jesus and the individual 
soul that believes or disbelieves. Jesus is the Son 
of God, who is one with His Father, and in whom 
is life; and the Son of Man, who is the ladder of 
descent and ascent of the messengers from heaven 
to earth, and to whom all judgment is committed. 
He knows all things, is conscious of His eter- 
nal glory, manifests it in miraculous signs upon 
earth, and returns to it through death. He that 
believes has eternal life; he that believes not 
is condemned already, because he has not be- 
lieved in the only-begotten Son of God. I am 





20 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


reverently convinced of the profundity and 
unique practical worth of this Gospel. Along 
with nearly every English writer, and at least 
some of the most competent recent German 
writers, I consider it highly probable that it 
represents, at least in. the main, the views of 
Jesus entertained by the Apostle John in the 
maturest days of his long life ; and I see no reason 
whatever against assigning it, even in its present 
form, to the very early years of the second 
century. Also, I am fully disposed to follow 
Haupt’ in finding in the Fourth Gospel a test of 
the reliableness of the views of Jesus’ mind de- 
rived from a scrutiny of the Synoptic Gospels. 
Yet I do not consider the Gospel of John to be 
history in quite the same sense as the Synoptics. 
No doubt it follows, to a certain extent, the thread 
of the Synoptic tradition ; and in its record of the 
visits of Jesus to Jerusalem and its unique account 
of the Passion it contains a series of valuable 
reminiscences that are altogether independent of 
that tradition. But these narrative sections form 


1 Die eschatologischen Aussagen Jesu in den synoptischen 
Evangelien. Reuther u. Reichard, Berlin, 1895. ua 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 21 


only a small portion of the Gospel. If I were 
asked to give a title to the Gospel of John ex- 
pressive of its zazz contents, I should be disposed 
to say that it contained the characteristic thoughts 
and claims of Jesus, the Son of God, reproduced by 
inspired reflection, as from Fis own lips, by a 
disciple who lay upon Firs breast, beheld His glory, 
and recewed of His fulness. 

It will, I think, be obvious to you that to one 
whose views of the Fourth Gospel are accur- 
ately (though generally) expressed in such a title, 
it cannot seem proper to give it other than a 
secondary place in an investigation whose object 
is to ascertain the Messianic thoughts of Jesus, 
so far as possible, as He Himself expressed 
them. 

II. I pass to the presuppositions to which I 
assign the value of ascertained fact. They have 
to do, principally, with the Synoptic testimony to 
the eschatological utterance and thought of Jesus. 

1. First, then, the eschatological utterances of 
Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels, taken separately, 
bear on their face the stamp of being as literal 
reports as possible of His actual words. They are 





22 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


always vivid and pictorial, and are often fitted 
with that tenacious clutch of the memory—a 
proverb or a parable. Who doubts, for example, 
that, in some eschatological connection, He used 
the proverb, Where the carcass, there the eagles ;* 
or the parable of the jig tree whose branches soften 
at the approach of summer?” 

I would, however, specially mention a consider- 
able class of sayings that possess even a stronger 
certificate than the appendix of a parable. They 
are those that are couched in the form of a pre- 
diction so direct and definite, and, at the same 
time, so apparently fallacious, even from the 
point of view of the Evangelist, that nothing 
short of the fact that they were actually uttered 
can account for the report of them in the Gospels. 
I instance two, not of the most important, but of 
the most striking of these. 

The one is Matthew x. 23: ‘ Verily I say unto 
you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities 
of Israel till the Son of Man be come.” If it is 
possible, it is not easy even for us to rid ourselves 


1 Matt. xxiv. 28; Luke xvii. 37. 
2 Matt. xxiv. 32; Mark xiii. 28; Luke xxi. 29. 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 23 


of the impression that Jesus meant to intimate 
that His advent in glory would certainly take 
place within a space to be measured rather by 
months (if not weeks) than years, from the time 
of His speaking. And, even if we make the im- 
probable supposition that the disciples who heard 
the saying did not understand it in this way, it 
will still be unquestionable that the first genera- 
tion of Christians would find in it, at the least, an 
‘emphatic assurance that the Advent belonged to 
their time, and that they had individually every 
chance of witnessing it. 

Now, on the supposition that Matthew wrote 
before 70 A.D., it was obviously possible for 
him to take the words in this sense. But is it 
possible to suppose that he did so without a 
certain measure of misgiving? Why had words 
so singularly definite—pointing only by a strained 
interpretation to a period measurable by years 
and not rather by months —not been fulfilled 
long ago? No doubt, facts had now made the 
strained interpretation inevitable; but what if 2 
were to prove as fallacious as the other? Would 
it not be wise to suppress this ZLogzox altogether, or 


24 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


at least give it a less definite form? I can think ~ 
of only one thing potent enough to overcome 
these scruples: it was the conscientious certainty 
of the Evangelist that Jesus used the words he 
reports and no other. 

The other instance is more striking, both in its 
own nature and in the fact that it is represented 
in all the Synoptics. It is the saying that some 
of those, who were with Jesus about the time of 
the Transfiguration, should not taste death until 
they saw the Kingdom of God. In Matthew 
(xvi. 28) it is: ‘Verily I say unto you, There be 
some standing here which shall not taste of death 
till they see the Son of Man coming in His King- 


” 


dom.” In Mark (ix. 1) it is the same, except 
that ‘Son of Man coming,” etc., becomes the 
more indefinite “the Kingdom of God coming 
in power ”—a fact which whoever is bold enough 
may use against our theory of the priority of 
Mark. The objection would be the more plausible 
that in Luke (ix. 27) the words run: “I tell 
you truly, There are some of those standing there 
(atrod) who shall not taste of death until they see 


the Kingdom of God.” Here surely was not only 





THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 25 


a definite prediction, but, as nearly as possible, 
a personal promise. 

If Luke, as is probable, wrote as late as 
75 A.D., would he not inevitably have the feeling 
that here was a promise whose fulfilment had 
been strangely delayed; and is it not more than 
possible that both he and some later editor of 
Mark changed, what was presumably the more 
original and personal form of expression (“the 
Son of Man coming in His Kingdom”), into 
the more indefinite “ Kzxgdom of God coming”? 
The fact that the Zogzon is there at all, and 
that not even the latest reporter ventures to rid 
it of its aspect of personal promise, is the 
strongest guarantee that the saying in its most 
definite form is an accurate report. 

These sayings, and others of similar character 
that might be cited, not only bear a powerful 
certificate of their own genuineness, but they offer 
a scarcely less powerful, if less direct, one to 
‘the whole cycle of eschatological sayings in the 
Synoptics. For it will be found, I think, that 
precisely the same considerations apply, more or 
less, to them all. 





26 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


2. The second presupposition for which I claim 
the value of fact relates to the arrangement of the 
eschatological sayings of Jesus in the Synoptic 
Gospels. If the reports of these sayings, taken 
separately, bear the strongest possible certificate 
of accuracy, it is by no means possible to make 
the same claim for the order in which they occur, 
in any one, or in all, of the three Gospels. We must 
be prepared, that is, not only for the possibility, 
but for the fact, that some of the eschatological 
sayings have been placed by the Evangelists in 
wrong and even misleading contexts. 

I do not mean that the Evangelists have 
intended to mislead; or to deny that they fre- 
quently give us sequences of the sayings of 
Jesus, whose inevitableness proves their accuracy. 
All I mean is, that they have to a certain 
extent failed, through inevitable misunderstand- 
ing, to give us the correct contexts of correctly 
reported sayings. It is not, of course, enough 
to refer in proof of this to the well-known fact 
that the same sayings are found in different 
connections in different Gospels; for there is no 
reason in the world why Jesus, the itinerant 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 27 


Preacher, should not frequently have uttered 
the same sayings on different occasions, or even 
in different connections of thought. Nor is it 
enough to point out that all the Evangelists 
followed to some extent the method Matthew 
very evidently took—that of trying to arrange 
the sayings of Jesus, which were to a large extent 
self-contained proverbs, on some topical principle. 

In our first reading of the Synoptic Gospels 
the eschatological sayings do not bulk largely in 
our vision; and we may be disposed to argue 
that, where there was so little to report, there 
was little room for mistake. If we are to make 
our point, I fear we must put ourselves to the 
trouble of looking with some minuteness at one 
or two Synoptic passages, each of which con- 
tains a series of eschatological sayings. 

I purposely choose first one that is to a con- 
siderable extent peculiar to one Evangelist, viz., 
Luke. The passage is that beginning at Luke 
Xvii. 20, and running on throughout twenty-five 
verses down to xviii. 8. 

This is a pretty long text, and we see at a 
glance that it contains important matter of the 


, * 





28 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


kind of which we are in search. It is character- 
istically introduced by Luke in connection with 
a specified incident—a question of the Phari- 
sees as to when the Kingdom of God should 
come. But, when we look at the discourse more 
closely, we find that, while the general theme 
of the whole passage may be described as the. 
final manifestation of the Kingdom of God, the 


passage itself is by no means homogeneous. 


~~ One may recognise the homiletic skill with which 


the Evangelist gives practical unity to the passage, 
making the reader feel all through the urgency of 
the lesson ‘‘ watch and pray,” and find in this cir- 
cumstance a proof of the Evangelist’s fidelity to 
the Master’s spirit. But we are engaged in a 
scientific enquiry as to one particular matter; and 
what I have to point out is, that while all the 
utterances here recorded, taken separately, bear 
the certificate of accuracy, it is not possible to 
attribute to our Lord the intellectual incoherence 
of having uttered them in the order of the Evan- 
gelist’s text, without explanations designed to show 
the transitions of thought. And if we find that 
the separate fragments of discourse presuppose, 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 29 


in all probability, not only different turns of 
thought, but different occasions, determined by 
the varying needs of varying listeners, the sugges- 
tion that this heterogeneous matter represents 
different stages of one discourse, delivered at one 
time, and arising (as the Evangelist seems to 
represent) out of one occasion—the question of the 
Pharisees—must seem, to say the least, highly 
improbable. 

Let us briefly analyse the passage. The 
Pharisees ask, When shall the Kingdom of God 
come? It is fair to see in the first words of 
verse 22, And He said unto Hrs disctples, a sign 
that the Evangelist himself recognises—what to us 
is surely obvious—that the proper answer to this 
question, an answer wholly characteristic of Jesus, 
is found in verses 20f. The answer is entirely 
in the spirit of the answer to the question, Lord, 
ave there few that be saved? (Luke xiii. 23). The 
design in both cases is to rebuke unprofitable 
speculation and fix attention on present problems. 
The meaning is: Why trouble about the future 
of the Kingdom when you have to do with the 
power of it already present? The matter of 





30 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


importance is not to know the “times” of the 
Kingdom, but its preparation and power in your 
own lives." 

The next verses (22-25) are obviously very 
different. The Evangelist feels the difference, 
and tells us that they were addressed to the 
disciples. Their point is not to discourage the 
idea of a future and external manifestation of the 
Kingdom, but to warn the disciples against the 
temptation of their own eagerness to see the end. 
When, in the pressure of trouble, they long for 
the day that comes not, let them not waste energy 
in looking here or there for the signs of the end. 
Let them rather be assured that the end, when 
it comes, will be like the lightning—simultaneous, 
all-pervading, and unmistakable. 

11.n his work, Die Reichsgotteshofinung in den altesten Christlichen 
Dokumenten und bei Jesus, published since these Lectures were 
written, I learn from a review in the Critical Review of Theological 
and Philosophical Literature (Nov. 1903) that Professor Wernle, 
of Basel, gives an interpretation of verses 20f. very different from 
the above: The Kingdom of God is among you so quickly (like a 
lightning flash, cp. verse 24), that there shall be no time for sight or 
speech beforehand. If this were correct, the section, verses 20-30, 
might be considered fairly homogeneous. The matter is worth 


investigating, but I must be content, at present, to refer the reader to 
Wernle’s book.On verses 20 and 21 of Luke xvii., see Appendix A. 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 31 


Now, I consider it as certain as anything in 
the Gospels, that Jesus used this image of the 
lightning, in the sense just suggested. But it 
is surely improbable that He spoke the words 
about the lightning immediately after those to 
the Pharisees, and with them still forming part 
of the audience. Can we make Him re- 
sponsible for the incoherence of saying in one 
sentence, Zhe Kingdom of God does not come 
with outward sign, and in the next, The 
outward sign, when it does come, will be quite 
unmsitakable? Is it not more probable that the 
association of the two sayings is due to the 
Evangelist ; and that, as Haupt suggests, what 
led him to the association may have been the 
repetition in verse 23 of the phrase of verse 21, 
Lo here, lo there? 

A sign that the next passage (verses 26-30) 
is also out of place, lies in the isolated character 
of verse 25, But first wt is necessary that He 
should suffer many things and be rezected of thts 
generation, which has no particular relevance 
either to what precedes or to what follows. But, 


1 But see Appendix A, ve pera rapatnpyceas. 





32 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


apart from this, it is not probable that, immediately 
after telling the disciples not to trouble themselves 
with an anxious search for something that would 
assert itself in its own time quite unmistakably, 
He should have proceeded to say, in effect, Yet 
you must be very much on the alert, for the coming 
will be sudden, The sayings in themselves (wit- 
ness the pictures of Noah and Sodom) have the 
usual stamp of genuineness, but it is, to my mind, 
altogether likely that their place in the passage be- 
fore us is due to the Evangelist and not to Jesus ; 
the connecting link in his mind being probably 
the ightning, with its suggestion of suddenness. 
The most evident instance of misplacement 
in this passage is perhaps that offered by the 
next verses (31-33). Even if the equivalent of 
verses 31 and 32 did not occur in Matthew’s text 
in connection with the impending disaster of 
Jerusalem, it is obvious that Jesus could not have 
spoken as if physical flight had anything to do 
with escaping the judgments of the day of the 
Son of Man, and that He cannot be held re- 
sponsible for the irrelevance of introducing the 
great paradox about saving life by losing it, in 


° ee 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 33 


connection with an exhortation to save physical 
life and let mere property alone. 

But suppose we grant that the sayings contained 
in verses 31 to 33 had, as Jesus uttered them, to do 
with a warning to the disciples that a time would 
come when they would best seek safety by literal 
flight from the Holy City, no longer holy, it 
becomes immediately clear that the next verses 
(34-37) belong to some other connection. They 
have nothing to do with the kind of disaster 
that could be evaded by flight. They perhaps 
belong, as Haupt has suggested, to a connection 
in which Jesus pointed out, with characteristic 
vividness, that similarity of condition between two 
persons in this world was no guarantee of a 
corresponding similarity in the world to come. If 
we allow verse 37 to belong to the same connec- 
tion, it can only be on the understanding that it 
indicates a misapprehension on the part of the 
disciples, who suppose Jesus to be speaking of 
some definitely foreseen catastrophe that is to 
happen within geographical limits (Where, Lord ?). 
By His proverbial answer, Jesus might mean only 


to say that such catastrophes do not happen 
3 





34 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS- 


without reason. It is as if He said: Where 
there is moral corruption, there will be also the 
stroke of Divine judgment. 

Finally, there is the section, xviii. 1-8. The 
motive of the parable, according to the Evan- 
gelist (see verses 7 and 8), was not simply to 
teach the lesson that men in general should 
pray perseveringly, but to encourage the fainting 
children of the Kingdom to continue praying, 
in spite of the delay of the glorious Advent 
that would bring them deliverance. Let them 
be found praying when the Son of Man comes. 
It is, of course, quite possible that Jesus gave 
an eschatological turn to this parable about 
prayer, but the words in which the parable is 
introduced, taken along with what we know 
otherwise of the manner of the Evangelist, warn 
us that we cannot be so certain of this as of the 
fact that Jesus spoke the parable itself. 

The form in which the parable is introduced at 
xviii. I suggests strongly that, in the document 
from which the Evangelist borrowed, it did not 
occur in any specially eschatological connection. 
If it had been introduced as part of a continuous 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 35 


discourse which had reference throughout to the 
last days, it is not likely that the writer would 
have interrupted his report with a formula of 
introduction fitted to suggest an altogether new 
topic. The parable would have been woven into 
the discourse. Its natural place would have 
been, I think, at verse 24. Jesus might very well 
have said: Do not be misled by your longing for 
the deliverance of the day of the Son of Man. 
Give yourselves rather to prayer. Prayer may 
seem to be in vain, but it never really is so. Its 
power lies in its importunity. On the whole, 
perhaps, it is more probable (the point is not one 
to be pressed either way) that the eschatological 
turn of the parable is due to the Evangelist 
rather than to Jesus. 

3. If this were so, it suggests a feature of the 
Synoptic Evangelists for which I wish now to 
claim distinct recognition. It is their liability 
to misunderstand Jesus. There are probably 
no ancient reports in the world so manifestly 
objective and veracious as the Synoptic Gospels. 
Certainly, in these qualities none excel them. But 
every quality has its defects. The defect of the 





36 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


supremely accurate reporter is, that while he 
never consciously misrepresents, he sometimes 
unconsciously misunderstands. It is, to me, as 
certain as any fact in history, that the Evangelists 
sometimes and inevitably misunderstood Jesus. 
Perhaps they never really misreported a sentence 
taken by itself. Perhaps they understood all that 
He judged it possible to convey to their minds. 
Still, I would stake the entire worth of this 
investigation upon the assertion that they did not 
understand fully, and therefore partially mis- 
understood, the mind of Jesus, in reference to the 
Kingdom of God. They misunderstood, in 
particular, His way of thinking and speaking 
about its consummation. 

/] might be content here to remind you of the 
familiar fact that the sense of the impending 
end of the world pervades the New Testament. yv 
In the earlier writers, St. Paul and the Synop- 
tists, we feel the full force of the expectation 
that ‘this generation” shall not pass till all 
the signs of the end be fulfilled; and though 
inevitably in later writers, such as the Fourth 
Evangelist, the author of Second Peter, and 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 37 


the writer to the Hebrews, the wave of 
immediate expectation has to a considerable 
degree spent its force, it may fairly be said that 
it does not recede without noise. 

The New Testament may be described as 
a book of the first and second generations of 
Christians, and it would be roughly true to say 
that the motto of the first generation was, Zhe 
Lord cometh, and of the second, Ze patient 
unto the coming of the Lord. \ should be dis- 
posed to claim, also, that the second generation 
is represented in the Synoptics as well as 
the first. It will be best, however, to leave 
generalities, and find the evidence we are look- 
ing for in one of the eschatological discourses 
of the Gospels. Let us take the discourse of 
greatest bulk and prominence—that appended to 
the question of the disciples about the destruc- 
tion of the Temple. Let us look first, not at 
the oldest report (Mark xiii.), but rather at the 
one in Matthew (chap. xxiv.), which is closely 
modelled upon Mark’s, but is more elaborate and 
more carefully articulated; and let us remember 
that our immediate object is not to get at the 





38 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


meaning of Jesus, but rather to see clearly what 
the Evangelist (as judged by his report) must 
have thought that He meant. 

Observe, then (a), that verse 3f. implies the 
practical, if not the absolute, identification as to 
time of the fall of the Temple, the coming of the 
Son of Man, and the end of the world. The 
identification is really matter of course with the 
Evangelist, and he has no interest in the fall of 
the Temple except as the immediate prelude 
of the end of the age and the glorious Advent 
of the Son of Man. Hence, at verse 4, Jesus goes 
at once to the main matter of the Advent; and 
He alludes to the disasters at Jerusalem only as 
one of the afflictions preliminary to the end. The 
Evangelist reveals his own interest in the matter, 
with perfect frankness, in the parenthetic remark 
(verse 15), Whoso readeth, let him understand. 1 
am tempted to consider it a sign of conscien- 
tiousness in reporting, that, unlike Luke, neither 
Matthew nor Mark (his supposed original) 
represents Jesus as using in this discourse the 
word Jerusalem. The parenthesis might perhaps 
mean partly, Though He did not say Jerusalem, 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 39 


you and I, my readers, know quite well what He 
meant. 

(6) The first great section of Matthew's report 
ends at verse 14. The purport is: Before the end 
there must come a series of troubles of which the 
first are external, wars and plagues (verse 8), and 
the next are those specially affecting the “elect,” 
namely, the hatred and persecution which will try 
their fidelity. The love of some will grow cold, 
but those who endure to the end will be saved. 
When they have preached the gospel to all 
nations, the end will come. Observe, again, the 
Evangelist does not represent Jesus as saying to 
the disciples: You and the men of your day will 
accomplish this work, I fully believe that Jesus 
used precisely such words as are reported in 
verse 14 (“This gospel of the Kingdom shall 
be preached,” etc.); but I am equally certain 
that the Evangelist considered Him to have 
meant (probably never dreamt of His meaning 
_ anything else than) that the work of this mission 
would be begun and finished by the men of that 
generation. ie 


(c) Next comes the section (verses 15-22) on 






40 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


the disasters of Jerusalem. It is reasonable to ask, 
here, a question we have partly answered already : 
Why does the Evangelist, to the manifest derange- 
ment of his material, introduce the Jerusalem 
section just here? Why, ¢.g., is verse 5 separated 
from verse 26, both dealing with the same sub- 
ject of the false Christs? Following in the wake 
of Weiffenbach,* Wendt, Joh. Weiss, and many 
others suppose that Matthew and Mark incor- 
porated at this point, wholly or in part, the text 
of a brief Jewish-Christian apocalypse, written 
probably at the beginning of the distress of the 
final Roman invasion under Titus, just as the 
Book of Daniel was written at the beginning of 
the distress over the Syrian invasion under 
Antiochus Epiphanes. There is something 
attractive in the theory. One might see in it a 
way of escape from seeming to implicate our 
Lord in the incoherences of this discourse, and 
be willing on the other hand to excuse the Evan- 
gelists for their departure from the vé/e of strict 
reporters, on the ground that Jesus did actually 


1 Der Wiederkunftsgedanke Jesu nach den Synoptikern, kritisch 
untersucht und dargestellt, Breitkopf u. Hartel, Leipzig, 1873. 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 41 


make considerable use of apocalyptic language, 
and had the Book of Daniel much in mind 
throughout the experience of the Passion. It 
has also to be said that the theory has many 
learned supporters, and that they agree in the 
main in the selection of the portions of Mark xiii. 
(= Matthew xxiv.) which represent the Apoca- 
lypse. Yet, on various grounds, the theory is 
improbable, and we may oppose to it, at least for 
the present, an emphatic zon /iguet. 

One would like to know more definitely, how 
the holders of this theory conceive the apocalyptic 
document which the Evangelists are supposed 
partly to incorporate in their text. Was it an 
apocalypse of the old canonical order, in which 
the alleged seer (in this case /esws) was repre- 
sented as referring with more or less obvious- 
ness to events that were passing in the apoca- 
lyptical writer's own later time (in this case the 
horrors of the siege of Jerusalem)? If so, we 
may object to the theory that an apocalypse of 
this kind—vwritten within forty years of the 
alleged seer’s death—is altogether without parallel 
in the history of apocalyptic literature. Or was 





42 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


the document another of the kind represented 
by the New Testament Apocalypse, in which the 
primary Seer, who is also the Revealer, is not 
the earthly Jesus, but the Risen and Glorified 
One who was and is and is to come? 

We may admit it to be possible, or even likely, 
that the age of the Neronic persecution witnessed 
the production within the Church of other 
Christian apocalypses than the one which has 
become canonical; but it remains as difficult 
as ever to conceive how writers like the 
Synoptic Evangelists, so manifestly veracious in 
spirit, and so careful to report the sayings of 
Jesus, so far as might be possible, in the form 
in which they were remembered, should have 
‘thought it consistent with either reverence, vera- 
city, Or common sense, to put into the lips of the 
earthly Jesus the words of a book written in their 
own time, and containing revelations, real or 
alleged, made by Jesus in His heavenly being. 
Moreover, if the Evangelists incorporated an 
apocalyptic text, what motive had they for 
breaking it up, as on every version of the 
theory (with which I am acquainted) they did, 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 43 


—especially when their breaking it up brought 
out only such tangled sequences as we have in 
Matthew xxiv. and Mark xiii.? If they had 
before them an apocalyptic text as coherent as 
that which Wendt picks out from Mark xiii. 
(viz., verses 7-9a@, 14-20, 24-27, 30f.), what 
conceivable motive had they for destroying its 
sequences ? 

It is one thing to admit that the Synoptic 
Evangelists, in all likelihood, found the mind 
of God in His Son, expressed in books like 
the canonical New Testament Apocalypse; it is 
another thing to admit, apart from much stronger 
evidence than is, in this case, available, that, in 
what purports to be a report of a discourse held 
by Jesus with some of His disciples on a memor- 
able evening in Passion week, these same Evan- 
gelists supplied the missing links of memory from 
a document which, however true it might be to 
the spirit of Jesus and in its own place edifying, 
possessed, as they well knew, no claim to be con- 
sidered a report of words actually spoken by 
Jesus on earth. 


If we decline to accept the ‘“ Little Apocalypse” 





44 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


theory,’ what motive are we to assign for the Evan- 
gelist’s arrangement of the items in his discourse ? 
We cannot, of course, profess certainty in such a 


region, but we are probably going in the right 


1 The “Little Apocalypse” as represented according to Wendt, 
in Mark xiii., runs as follows :— ; 

[Many shall come to you in My name, saying, I am He, and 
shall deceive many.] “When ye shall hear of wars and rumours 
of wars, be not alarmed. This must be, but not yet is the end. 
For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. 
There shall be earthquakes in divers places, there shall be famines. 
These things are the beginning of pains. But look to your own 
selves. And when ye see the ‘Abomination of Desolation’ standing 
where it ought not, let him that readeth understand, then let them 
which are in Judza flee unto the mountains. Let him that is on 
the house-top not come down or go in to take anything from his 
house, and let him who is on the field not turn back to take his 
coat. And woe to those that are with child, and to those that give 
suck in those days. And pray that it may not happen in winter. 
In those days shall be affliction such as has not been, and might 
not be, since the beginning of the creation which God created until 
now (ov pa yévnra). And except the Lord shortened these days, 
no flesh should besaved. But for the elect’s sake whom He chose, 
He shortened the days. But in those days after that affliction the 
sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and 
stars shall be falling from heaven, and the powers which are in the 
heavens shall be shaken. And then they shall see the Son of Man 
coming in clouds with great power and glory, and then shall He 
send forth the angels, and gather His elect from the four winds, 
from the end of earth to the end of heaven. Verily I say unto 
you, this generation shall not pass till all these things happen. 
Heaven and earth shall pass, but My words shall not pass.” 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 45 


direction when we suggest that the Evangelist 
put the part of the discourse relating to Jerusalem 
in the centre because, as his parenthetic remark 
shows, he felt the matter contained in it to be, at 
the moment of writing, of urgent practical import- 
ance. What is to me indubitable is, that he 
could not have arranged his material in a way 
that seems to us so confused, unless it had been 
to him matter of course that there was practically 
no difference—as to time—between the disaster 
impending the Jewish State and the day of the 
Son of Man.’ We are most certain of what it 
does not occur to us to doubt, and it is precisely 
this kind of certainty more than any other that 
can make us blind to the most amazing incon- 
sistencies. Thus, at verse 21, it is clear that in 
the Evangelist’s mind the ‘great tribulation” 
refers to the tragedies that are, likely enough, 
being enacted in Jerusalem at the very moment 
of writing. It does not occur to him to ask how 
this can be squared with the remark about the 
shortening of the days for the elect’s sake. Does 
he forget that the elect have already sought 
safety from “the tribulation” by flight? or find 


40 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


nothing strange in the assumption that the whole 
world (‘‘all flesh”) will necessarily be involved in 
the disasters of Jerusalem ? 

At verses 29 and 30 he indicates his point 
of view with clearness. After the tribulation 
(z.2., the disasters in Jerusalem) there are to 
be catastrophic transformations of the firma- 
ment of heaven, and then the sign of the Son 
of Man is to appear. Obviously, the matter 
of urgent importance to the Evangelist’s mind 
closes at verses 34 f. We are indebted to his 
fidelity as a historian for the very impressive 
closing section on the uncertainty of the day of 
the Son of Man, but surely it is only the Evan- 
gelist’s prepossession, in the sense explained, that 
can lead him to overlook the fact, that the ex- 
pression of this uncertainty which he reports is 
not consistent with the assurance that all the 
signs referred to in the discourse, including that 
of the Son of Man, will take place in the lifetime 
of that generation. I see no reason to doubt 
that Jesus uttered all the sayings of this discourse, 
taken by themselves, almost literally as they are 
reported. I find it, to say the least, difficult to 





THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 47 


regard it as a credible, or even as a reverent, 
supposition, that He uttered them in the order 
and sense, which, without any intention to mis- 
lead, the Evangelist represents. 

III. I come, in closing, to the presuppositions 
which are of moral certainty. Here it is possible 
to be brief. We are in a region that has little to 
do with documents or open questions ; and already, 
in the last section, we have been partly assum- 
ing what we may now more clearly express. Our 
presuppositions are reducible to two :—1.~The 
first is, that Jesus did not suffer from any limita- 
tion of knowledge, or misconception, that hindered 
Him, in any degree, from doing the will of God, 
His Father. “This does not mean literal omni- 
science, but it does imply the kind of omniscience 
that seems to be claimed for Him in the Gospels. 
He knew that He came from God and went to 
God, and He knew that all things pertaining to 
the realisation of the Kingdom of God among 
men were committed to Him. 

We need not ask, here, whether or not this 
implies a consciousness of metaphysical oneness 
of essence with God. What is certain is, that 


XN 





48 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


He was conscious of a limitation of knowledge, 
and yet was in no way hampered by His 
ignorance. He did not know the time of the 
full realisation of the Kingdom of God, but, in 
acknowledging this limitation, He stood in a 
certain sense beyond it. He so accepted the 
ignorance as to make it, not the limit, but rather 
the condition, of doing the will of God. It was 
not a detraction from His Sonship, rather the 
proof of it, that He too walked by faith, not by 
sight. 

2. I assume with moral certainty, that Jesus 
is not chargeable with intellectual inconsistency. 
Such a charge, even if it bore only on matters 
of physical science or literary criticism, would 
require an amount of evidence of which it is 
safe to say that it is not available. We know 
nothing of His thoughts on such matters, and 
are perhaps going beyond bounds when we 
conclude from His use of popular language that 
questions of science or literary criticism were as 
little within the horizon of His mind as the duty 
of settling them was within His vocation as the 
Messianic Son of God. 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 49 


It may be as possible to over-emphasise the 
indifference as to exaggerate the importance 
of such things. It is to my mind more natural 
for those, to whom Jesus is Lord, to assume 
that He did not, even in the days of His 
flesh, think on any subject exactly as His con- 
temporaries, than to assume that, on matters 
comparatively indifferent to His vocation, His 
limitations were exactly the same as theirs. 
Grant, ¢.g., that He did not question the Davidic 
authorship of Psalm cx.,* it does not follow that 
His mind was not open on that subject in a way 
impossible to the average Scribe; nor does the 
fact that He said with seriousness,” “The Scripture 
cannot be broken,” prove that He had the same 
idea of inspiration as a contemporary Jewish 
theologian, or even as the Apostle Paul. I can 
regard with respect the position of the student 
who holds that, in regard to matters that lay 
at the circumference rather than the centre of 
His vocation, Jesus did not think as a trained 
modern scholar must think. This is a charge, 
at worst, not of inconsistent but of limited think- 


1 Matt. xxii. 42 ff., and parallels. 2 John x. 35. 
4 





50 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


ing, and I am not conscious of any obligation 
to vepel—but still less of one to assert—such a 
charge, even in regard to matters that may lie 
nearer the centre than the circumference. What 
I affirm or assume with moral certainty is, that 
He did not think or express Himself incon- 
sistently on any subject. He knew what He 
knew, and (to speak paradoxically) He knew what 
He did not know. Hence while I consider it 
undeniable that, owing to their limitations, the 
Synoptists fell into the contradiction (or at any 
rate the zzconsistency) of making Jesus declare at 
one moment that He did not know the time of 
the glorious Advent, and at another that it would 
infallibly happen within that generation, I con- 
sider it equally undeniable—though in the 
nature of the case not demonstrable by docu- 
mentary evidence—that this inconsistency is 
chargeable only to the Evangelists, and not to 
Jesus. 

I shall close with a corollary to this proposition. 
If His thinking was self-consistent and one, so 
also was His style of speech. Everyone sees 
that the Christ of the Synoptic Gospels did not 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 51 


speak at all in the style of a modern preacher 
or lecturer. Even if we allow that He must 
often have developed in some detail the thought 
that is preserved to us in the proverb or paradox 
which the Evangelists report, we may still assert 
with confidence that He spoke in pictures, not in 
syllogisms. There is extraordinary vividness, 
but also extraordinary elusiveness. The thought 
clutches us, in its tender strength, like a human 
arm. It arrests, attracts, subdues. Its voice is 
human and homely, but it defies exhaustive 
criticism and analysis. His words catch us in 
the angle of a situation. We are perfectly 
certain that we know their meaning for us, but 
it is just as certain that there is a reserve of 
possible meaning that eludes us. He speaks so 
plainly, yet so profoundly. He says so little, 
yet so much. What I wish specially to claim 
is, that this quality of His teaching is to be 
recognised in evevy part of His teaching. If we 
find it in His ethical teaching, there is no 
reasonable likelihood that it will be absent from 
what we call His eschatology. If His style is 
invariably pictorial, and His words have to be 





52 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


taken in a non-literal sense in that part of 
His teaching where there is no room for 
ambiguity, only a detailed proof can, in any 
given case, destroy the presumption that it is 
the same with utterances which touch the 
unknown future. 

No one supposes for a moment that, when 
Jesus said, Stvzve to enter im at the straw gate, 
He meant that the entrance into the Kingdom 
was a literal narrow gateway. Why should it be 
considered natural or inevitable to infer from His 
reminiscences of the Book of Daniel, in some 
of His references to the consummation of the 
Kingdom, that He expected, at that consum- 
mation, the literal exhibition to the world of a 
Figure coming with the clouds? This is, for our 
present investigation, a momentous example. I 
do not enter on the matter, at present, further 
than to say that it is to me axiomatic that the 
burden of proof rests rather with those who 
assert, than with those who deny, the literal sense 
of the words about the Son of Man coming with 
the clouds. If Jesus is “elusive” even in the 
words that impress practical obligations of 


THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY 53 


righteousness and faith, is there not at least 
equal room for the entry of this characteristic 
quality into speech regarding the things which 
eye hath not seen and which have not entered 
into the heart of man? 





Pec PURE TT. 


_ THE MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCA- 
_ LYPSE, CONSIDERED IN THEIR AFFINITY 


ie TO THE MIND OF JESUS. 








LECTURE II. 


THE MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCA- 
LYPSE, CONSIDERED IN THEIR AFFINITY 
TO THE MIND OF JESUS. 


SHALL avoid, so far as possible, matters 

of detail and dubiety in connection with 

the subject of Jewish Apocalyptic Literature. 
I wish to bring under your notice only some 
general and undoubted features of it, which had 
evidently, or, at least, probably, a certain attraction 
for Jesus. If we are able to set these features 
clearly before us, we shall be in better position 
to estimate the degree in which apocalyptic 
conceptions held His mind, and to deal with 
the questions raised by such a book as J. Weiss’s 
Jesus Preaching of the Kingdom of God. The 
word “apocalypse” (or vevelation) introduces us 


at once to the distinguishing idea of apocalyptic 
57 


58 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


literature ; for it marks the peculiar transcend- 
ence of the world, into which the apocalyptist 
introduces his readers. 

The Old Testament prophet was indeed always 
a person whom Jehovah admitted to a certain 
intimacy,’ and to whom He revealed His will. 
Yet the writings of the Prophets—from Amos 
to Malachi—are not apocalypses. Though the 
word of truth comes from the mystery and glory 
of the Divine presence, and there are upon the 
prophet’s spirit—partly communicated to his 
hearers—the shadow and pressure of the unseen 
world, it is not of that world that the prophet 
speaks or writes. What he is concerned to do is 
to show the will of Jehovah in connection with 
an actual crisis in the nation’s affairs. His 
function is to speak Jehovah’s message to His 
people Israel. His existence and his message 
presuppose not simply Jehovah and the peoples 
of the earth, but Jehovah and His peculiar 
people, with whom He is in covenant. No 
doubt, he has usually a message to the nations 


1 See especially the classic utterance in the earliest literary 
prophet, Amos iii. 7f. 






MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 59 


—small and great—that surround Israel, but 
his main message is to Israel itself. He has 
much to say in the way of warning; but he 
is never a messenger of despair, even in the, — 
narrower sense. To the last he believes in 
a great future for Israel in the world. The 
glorious condition for Israel and the world is that 
in which Israel, through obedience to Jehovah, 
is in a position to give, and the other nations, 
through submission to Israel as the Chosen of the 
true God, are in a position to receive, that law of 
Jehovah, whose observance brings all prosperity. 
Hence it is in no sense an accident but a neces- 
sity of the situation, that, when the Jews lost to 
the Greek empire of Alexander even the small 
measure of political independence that remained 
to them after the Captivity and the Restoration, 
the voice of prophecy, for long faintly heard, 
ceased altogether. It is an instructive fact that 
between the silencing of prophecy in the old sense 
and the rise of apocalyptic, which was in one aspect 
an imitation of prophecy or a pseudo prophecy, 
there arose in the minds of the Jewish theologians, 
fostered partly by contact with Hellenism but 





60 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


chiefly by a sense of the nation’s desolation, what is 
“usually known as the ¢vanscendent view of God. 
He was no longer the God, who knew individual 
Israelites face to face, and spoke to His people 
through His intimates, the prophets. He had 
retired behind the clouds. He, who once taber- 
nacled among His people, now dwelt in heaven 
only. But if Jehovah had thus withdrawn to His 
own apartness, there were those in Israel who 
retired into their own spirits and asked them- 
selves whether He would not still arise for 
His people. Was it not written that He should 
shake not the earth only, but also the heaven ?? 
Why should not the Almighty One bend the 
firmament of the stars and come forth upon 
the clouds, bringing the Kingdom and victory 
over their oppressors to His repentant people? 
Out of this reflective sentiment of faith grew 
\the apocalyptic literature, of which the earliest 
and—excepting the New Testament Apocalypse 
—by far the most brilliant and impressive 
specimen is the Book of Daniel. 
In the time of our Lord there were undoubtedly 


MHagei. 2k. 


MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 61 


other works of the apocalyptic class, many 
of them (if we may judge from the Axoch cycle) 
much more elaborate both in form and matter. 
These works, so far as they are accessible to us, 
supply a useful key to many turns of expression, 
and even to some comparatively important con- 
ceptions in the books of the New Testament. 
Professor Charles, in his incomparable edition 
of Enoch, gives a list of thirteen instances of 
literary contact between the Book of Similitudes 
alone and the Gospels.* Such lists do, perhaps, 
in some degree help us to understand lan- 
guage of our Lord, in reference to the unseen 
world, that has no exact or certain analogue in 
the canonical Scriptures; but it is probably vain 
to attempt to deduce any enlarged knowledge 
of His mind on such matters from His supposed 
acquaintance with the extra-canonical literature 
that existed in His time. There is little likelihood 
that He read any books outside the canonical 
Hebrew Scriptures, and less that He deduced 


anything important from them. 


1See my Handbook, 7zmes of Christ (T. & T. Clark), p. 145 f., 
footnotes. Charles gives about a hundred instances of literary 
contact between the whole Zzoch cycle and the New Testament. 


62 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


The utmost that can be conceded in this 
connection is probably, as Haupt? has pointed 
out, a certain natural similarity of phrase in 
the expressing of ideas of the class ‘eschato- 
logical” that are either main or subsidiary. 
Instances of mazz ideas of this kind might be: 
the Final Judgment, the Preliminary Woes, 
the Wonderful Advent of the Messiah.? 
Instances of subsediary ideas might be: Reward 
and Punishment in Hades, the Principalities of 
Evil Spirits, and, perhaps above all, the entire 
circle of ideas regarding Angels, who converse 
with the seer, are the medium of communication 
between Jehovah and His people, and ultimately 
their representatives before Him. 

It is obvious that some of the secondary 
ideas of apocalyptic are represented in the 
language of our Lord, and it is tempting to ask 
how far these secondary ideas, viewed apart 
from the situations that called for their use 
and gave them their power of appeal to re- 
ceptive hearers, represented to our Lord an 


‘1 Die eschatologischen Aussagen Jesu in den synoptischen Evan- 
gelien. Reuther u. Reichard, Berlin, 1895. See Appendix B. 
2 The “sign of the Son of Man,” Matt. xxiv. 30; cp. Mark xiii. 26, 





— os 


MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 63 


independent system of reality. Did He really 
believe in a personal Power of evil that had 
sway in this world and wrought ill in the bodies 
and souls of men apart from their own will? 
Did He conceive heaven as a place above the 
earth, containing the substance of objects and 
events only shadowed upon earth—in particular 
a book of pre-written history with the names of 
the elect and the angels who kept their first 
estate? Had He distinct ideas of an intermediate 
state of bliss and woe for disembodied spirits, and 
did He conceive the final state as accompanied 
by a bodily resurrection of all dead, and a sum- 
mons of all, yet alive in the flesh, to judgment 
executed by the Messianic Son of Man coming 
with the clouds? Did He know of a fiery abyss, 
to which, in the end, Satan and his angels, and 
all, whose names were not written in the Book of 
Life, should be consigned ? 

If the question were simply, Ave these things 
veal? it might be precarious in these days of 
psychical research to meet it with the answer, 
We do not and we cannot know. But we need 


not hesitate to give this answer to those 


64 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


who ask, What did our Lord think on these 
matters? and we may add, What the Master 
has joined together let not the disciple put 
asunder. ‘Ne have no means of knowing 
what Jesus thought about this or that element of 
what He always presented, and probably in His 
own mind always conceived, as a whole—the 
Kingdom of God. He never—so far as we 
know—distinguished, as we are fond of doing, 
between the idea and the picture. He presented 
each and both, indifferently, because each and 
both, indifferently, included the one indivisible 
reality—God’s reigning will and work in grace 
and judgment. 

The most careless eye can see that such con- 
ceptions as those we have mentioned shine 
through the language of Jesus in the Gospels, 
and in general pervade the New Testament; but 
it sees also, I fancy, that phrases in the Gospels, 
implying such apocalyptic conceptions, are con- 
cerned with a circle of spiritual facts or experi- 
ences, which are just as real to us as they could 
have been to those who heard Jesus speak. Can 


we conceive disciples, who heard such language, or 






MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 65 


evangelists who reported it, pausing to analyse in 
cold blood its appeal to heart and conscience, and 
asking: Did He really after all believe in these 
things—say, a personal Devil, a heaven, a hell? I 
confess I see, on the whole, no reason why the same 
class of questions should not seem to us as profanely 
irrelevant as they would have done to believers 
of the first century. If anyone is disposed to dis- 
pute this in the interests of science, I should be 
disposed to ask him to place himself, so far as 
possible, in the position of One, who knew no other 
business of life than to testify of the great realities 
of judgment and mercy and faith. I should 
ask him to consider how such a person even in 
this twentieth century, believing in God, in the 
infinite worth of the human personality, and the 
tremendous issues of right and wrong in human 
conduct, can hold speech on such matters as judg- 
ment and the hereafter, with the least power of 
appeal, even to human beings, who may be also 
philosophers, apart from the aid of just such 
apocalyptic pictures as Jesus employed. 

It may be legitimate to say that, if Jesus 


had lived in our time, He might perhaps have 
5 





66 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


said some secondary things with some secondary 
differences ; and, in our present limitations, there 
may be some use in saying that the pictures are 
incommensurate with the reality. But those, 
who follow Jesus in the conviction that the 
Kingdom is the supreme reality, and that it is 
not of this world, will feel that the matter of 
real importance is, not the inadequacy of the 
apocalyptic pictures to the reality, but rather 
their practical use in keeping the reality within 
touch. The power of the Master seems to have 
had little in common with that of a modern 
theologian, whether orthodox or speculative. He 
knew Himself to be the “Son of God,” and yet 
He spoke as a man to men; and He so spoke 
as to convey the things of the supernatural 
kingdom, to those who were prepared to receive 
them. If we wish to fee/ the pulse-beats of the 
words of life in the Gospels, we must be content 
not to see the heart at work. The mystery will 
not disclose itself even to the finest anatomical 
knife. 

Looking, then, away from secondary matters, 
and remembering that the Book of Daniel is the 


MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 67 


only apocalyptic book, which Jesus actually cited, 
and that upon an occasion in some respects the 
most solemn and critical in His life, we shall do 
best, in this short study, to take our illustrations 
of the essential features of apocalyptic from this 
book alone. I wish to mention, first, two features 
that may seem of a comparatively external and, 
in one case, artificial nature. 

1. The one is that the Apocalypses are, as it 
has been put, Zvacts for Bad Times.’ It cannot 
be said, of course, that they are born of despair, 
but it may be said that they are born zz despair. 
I do not regard it as open to question that the 
date of the composition of the Book of Daniel 
is the time of the Syrian oppression under 
Antiochus Epiphanes—z.e., 168-165 B.c. And, 
quite apart from any questions about its 
language,” I regard it as practically certain that 

1 T borrow the phrase from Mr. C. A. Scott’s “ Revelation” in the 
Century Bible, a book worthy to be put alongside of Dr. Driver's 
“Daniel” in the Cambridge Bible, as containing, in its Introductory 


Part, in concise form most things desirable to be known about 
Jewish Apocalypse. 

2 The Book of Daniel is written partly in Hebrew and partly in 
Aramaic. Chaps. i. I-ii. 42 and chaps. viii—xii. are in Hebrew ; 
chaps. ii. 44-vil. 26 are in Aramaic. For a brief discussion of the 





68 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


the book, as we have it, is a unity. In speaking 
of this matter, Baldensperger* remarks that as 
the Book of Daniel originated in the time of the 
Syrian oppression, so the Psalms of Solomon 
appeared in the time of the first Roman invasion, 
the Similitudes of Enoch® in the time of the 
massacres under Herod the Great, the Assump- 
tion of Moses in the time immediately preceding 
the Fall of Jerusalem, and the Apocalypses of 
Ezra and Baruch in the time immediately succeed- 
ing it. There is not, perhaps, the same certainty 
as to any of the other details of this estimate that 
there is in regard to the first Mbut the passage 
calls attention to the fact that the motive of the 
Apocalypses is to bring a message of hope to the 
godly in a nation at the brink of despair. / 

In connection with this fact, we have to 
notice, that a frequent feature of an apocalyptist’s 
message to his time is, that the evil will yet 


reasons of the variety of language, see Drivers Daniel (‘ Intro- 
duction,” p. xxii). 

1 Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu im Lichte der messianischen 
Hoffnungen seiner Zeit. 2nd ed., 1892. Strassburg: Heitz u. 
Miindel. 

2 That is Exoch, chaps. xxxvii.—lxx. 


MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 69 


last a little, and become even worse before the 
deliverance. For example, in the portion of the 
vision of the seventh chapter of the Book of 
Daniel, which deals with the Grzco- Syrian 
kingdom of the author’s own time, not only is it 
allowed in general that this Fourth Kingdom is 
a worse oppressor than its predecessors, but de- 
tailed references, fairly recognisable even by us, 
are made to the Syrian kings, and especially to 
Epiphanes, and the policy of cruel sacrilege, with 
which he is wearing out the saints, even while 
the author writes. The apocalyptist’s message 
is in effect: He will do even worse, but his 
time is coming (vii. 23-26). It is not too much 
to say, that the woes preceding the End become 
henceforth a commonplace of the eschatological 
programme. They are, so to speak, the birth- 
throes of the Messianic time, or even of the 
Messiah Himself. In so far as an apocalyptic 
writer is genuinely in touch with the suffering 
of his time and has a message to the sufferers, 
this is usually part of it. 

2. The artificial feature—common, if I am not 


mistaken, to all known Apocalypses, except, 


7O THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


probably, the New Testament ona that the 
writer does not venture to appeal to his country- 
men in his own name.“ He assumes the name of 
some bygone saint or prophet. VI am not aware 
that we have any direct means of knowing how 
contemporaries, who might be in the secret, judged 
of this procedure. The strong presumption from 
silence is that an objection to it, as an offence 
against veracity, would hardly have been under- 
stood. In one of his posthumously published 
papers,’ the late distinguished Professor A. B. 
Davidson wonders, when students of Scripture will 
cease to ask, by whom, or when, a book was written, 
and will attend simply to what is written. In the 
first two centuries, at least, of the apocalyptic period, 
this simplicity seems to have been as nearly as 
possible realised. In our Lord’s references to 
the Book of Daniel, there is nothing to show that 
He did not regard what He read there as having 
been uttered and written by ‘the prophet Daniel,” 
who, we may remark by the way, is certified to 
have been a historical character by nothing more 


1 Biblical and Literary Essays (p. 218 f.). Hodder & Stoughton, 
1902. 






MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 71 


strongly than the fact that a writer, of about four 
and a half centuries later, thinks to gain accept- 
ance for his message by writing in the name of 
Daniel. The same kind of phenomenon meets 
us in the Epistle of Jude, where the words quoted 
from the Apocalypse of Enoch are referred to as 
uttered by Enoch, the seventh from Adam (Jude 
14). At the same time it ought to be remarked, 
that the fact that only one specimen of this pseudepi- 
graphic literature was admitted into the canon of 
Scripture, warns us against being too sure that this 
seeming was, in every instance, actual credulity. 

A matter more relevant to our discussion than 
the morality of pseudepigraphy in the Apocalypses 
is its motive or reason. The main reason was, 
I venture to think, unquestionably the fact that 
the Divine voice of prophecy was believed to have 
ceased. The weight of the Canon blocked the 
way of the apocalyptist, who might think of 
addressing his countrymen in his own name. 
Hence, even of Daniel, to whom, on account of 
his extraordinary fidelity to Jehovah even in the 
strongholds of idolatry, such marvellous visions 
and deliverances are ascribed, it is expressly 


72 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


related that he understood by “Books,” and 
especially by the prophecy of Jeremiah about 
the seventy years, the time “for the accomplishing 
of the desolations of Jerusalem” (Dan. ix. 2; 
cp. Jer. xxv. 11f.). And the author is in earnest 
about the seventy years, for he makes it the 
basis of all the reckoning of the other chapters, 
which has been the beginning of trouble to com- 
mentators, and of the lay reader’s distaste even 
for the Apocalypses of the Bible. 

Again, perhaps, involuntarily the question rises 
in our minds: How could the writer consider it 
veracious practically to represent Jeremiah as 
meaning not seventy but seven times seventy 
years? Probably the man, who could write the 
Book of Daniel, was just as conscious that he was 
going beyond the thoughts of Jeremiah as the 
author of Fourth! Ezra was conscious that, in 
interpreting the Fourth Kingdom to mean not 
the Greeco-Syrian but the Roman empire, he was 

1See Fourth Ezra xii. 11f. “Fourth Ezra” appears as 
“II Esdras” in the English Apocrypha. For the numbering of 
the various books that bear the name of Zzva, see E. Kautzsch’s 


Die Apokryphen u. Pseudepigraphen des A. T. (Mohr, 1899), 
vol. ii. in the Introduction to Fourth Ezra. 






- 
me 


ge | hl ie 


MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 73 


going beyond the thoughts of Daniel; but we 
may learn from the same analogy to be practically 
certain that he considered the real meaning of 
the seventy years to have been concealed from 
Jeremiah and revealed to himself. 

The late revered Professor James Candlish 
told us, with characteristic courage of conviction, 
in his Lectures on the Kingdom of God? that 
the modern discovery of the fictitious element 
in the Book of Daniel deprived it, in his view, 
of its right to be reckoned part of the literature 
of Divine revelation. With great respect, I 
must dissent both from the general principle and 
the particular application. The author of the 
Book of Daniel was, it seems to me, a man, on 
whom the hand of the Lord, in prophecy, lay 
so heavily and so urgently as to free from his 
path everything that hindered either the utter- 
ing of his message or the carrying it home to 
the despairing hearts of his fellow-countrymen. 
Scruples that seem to us so inevitable did not, 
I should almost venture to say, exist for him. 


1 The Kingdom of God, biblically and historically considered. 
T. & T. Clark, 1884. 





74 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


All that could have caused them belonged to 
the Divinely given situation and task. In any 
case, behind what we should call his literary 
method there is the great idea—not of course 
peculiar to apocalypse but attaining in it a certain 
distinctive prominence—of the Divine foreordi- 
nation. 

The message of the author of Daniel to 
the people of the covenant is that the whole 
course of their sufferings since the Babylonish 
Captivity to the author’s own time—the rise of 
one kingdom after another of unrighteous op- 
pressors of all the earth, and especially of the 
people of God—has been foreordained in punish- 
ment of Israel’s sins; but that the time of the 
finishing of the transgressions and the bringing 
in of the everlasting righteousness is at hand. 
To us, of course, the fantastic element in the 
expression of this weighty message is the working 
out of the puzzle of the canonical seventy years ; 
but for well-nigh fifty years—since the publica- 
tion in 1857 of the veteran Professor Hilgenfeld 
of Jena’s /idische Apokalyptzk—the puzzle has 
been practically made out. And it is time, now, 


MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 75 


that we learned something from the patient 
devoutness of our forefathers, who, in spite of 
all their straying and bewilderment in paths of 
exegesis over the text of the Book of Daniel 
(more fantastic even than those in which pseudo- 
Daniel himself wandered with the text of 
Jeremiah), never lost sight of the great idea that 
distinguishes the book. This idea, however after- 
wards elaborated and emphasised, was never per- 
haps made so living as in Daniel—the idea of the 
regnant purpose of God in all tracts of history, 
whether the history of the Gentiles or of the 
people, to whom He gave the law and the 
promises. 

This is one of the things in the Book of Daniel 
that have attracted reflective and spiritual minds 
in many ages, and I desire here reverently to 
claim it as one of the things, that lent to the book 
a certain affinity to the mind of our Lord. 

We cannot calculate the Divine periods, but 
it zs something to be certain that there ave periods, 
and that they ave calculated by One who measures 
and is measured by the Spirit of righteousness 
and love. 





76 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


I have purposely lingered over these two 
apparently external features of apocalypse, be- 
cause they really touch the heart of our subject 
more nearly than it at first seems, and because 
the latter is probably the feature, that occasions 
most difficulty to the modern mind. What has 
been said will, I think, be felt to introduce us in 
more than a formal way to features of apocalypse 
that are both really and obviously vital. 

I wish now to claim for apocalyptic literature, 
that it marks the beginning in Jewish history, and 
so in the religious history of the world, of new 
ideas, or, at any rate, a new development of idea 
regarding God and the wordd and /fe.* 

3. I have already referred to what is generally 
known as the ¢vanuscendent conception of God. 
The apocalyptic writers did not introduce this 
idea. It may rather be said to be the idea of 
God natural to a time when the voice of prophecy 
in the old sense was silent. But it may be claimed 
for the apocalyptic writers that they gave to this 


idea a Positive instead of a merely negative value. 

1 For this classification (God, world, life) I acknowledge grate- 
fully indebtedness to Mr. C. A. Scott’s “ Revelation,” elsewhere 
referred to. 


MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 77 


In other words, they turned the idea of the Divine 
transcendence to practical account. He whose 
proper habitation was the heaven of heavens, 
and whose immediate subjects were invisible 
hosts, was all the more the one true God, whose 
name should alone be worshipped in the earth. 
In particular, He was still the God who had given 
His law to Israel; and in the fact that He com- 
manded the armies of heaven lay a sure ground 
of hope that He would still do wonders for His 
people, or, at any rate, for the remnant of them 
that kept His law. 

In his excellent /idzsche Apokalyptrk, already 
referred to, Professor Hilgenfeld has pointed 
out that, looking to the natural division of the 
Book of Daniel into two parts—chaps. i.—vi. 
and chaps. vii.—xiimwe may say that it em- 
phasises the two ideas: (1) that even in the 
period of Israel’s lowest fortunes, when her men 
of repute were but pensioners in the royal 
courts of the Chaldzans and the Medes, God 
wrought wonders of deliverance for men, like 
Daniel and his companions, who purposed in 
their heart to keep His law. Daniel was both 





78 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


the prophet and the witness of the humbling and 
conversion of monarchs of a world-wide empire. 
And (2) that the time of the deliverance of all 
the faithful was appointed. It was at hand for 
those who could read the vision. The time and 
the glorious manner of it had been revealed to 
Daniel, who would stand in his lot of blessedness 
with all the faithful in the last days. 

It is surely a fact of singular impressiveness 
that a book of such living and lofty faith as the 
Book of Daniel—so attractive even to children in 
its narrative part, and so full in its vision part of 
the seed-thoughts of faith regarding the Divine 
government of all history —should have been 
produced at a time, when, in presence of the 
“abomination of desolation standing in the holy 
place,” ! it must have seemed to the godly in Israel 
that the last witness of Jehovah’s favour towards 
His people was being trampled under foot. We 


1 Antiochus removed the altar of burnt-offering and set up an 
altar to Zeus Olumpios. See Dan. viii. 11f. and xi. 37f. The 
expression ov» pipein (Dan. xi. 31), lit. “the abomination that 
makes desolate,” is with great probability supposed to be, in its 
latter half, a parody of open bys (Lord of the heavens), which 
Antiochus would apply to Zeus. See Drivers Daniel, p. 150 f. 
Driver translates open “ appalling,” “ horror-causing.” 


MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 79 


may find in this the warrant for giving the book a 
unique place in religious history. Read in all the 
light that modern critical science can throw upon 
it, it still seems to give a unique emphasis to the 
truth that the more the Divine Being is conceived 
to transcend the conceptions of men and the 
limitations of the known world, the more surely 
may He be trusted to give the supreme and 
lasting power to those, who, in the greatest stress 
of adversity, are content simply to wait upon 
Him and keep His law. 

We have no means of answering the question, 
What did the Master think of what we should 
call the fictitious and legendary elements of this 
book ?>—and I shrink, in this reference, from sug- 
gesting even probabilities. On the other hand, 
I venture to think it more than a probability that 
He appreciated to the full the unique religious 
quality of the book; and, while He did not read 
it apart from older Scriptures, whose touch with 
life was in the nature of the case more direct if 
not more real, I hope in the fourth Lecture (on 
the title ‘‘Son of Man”) to give reason for saying, 
that the vision of the final glory, that held His 





80 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


imagination all through His ministry, was that 
which finds expression in this book. 

If this be so, I think we must add, that Jesus 
found something in the Book of Daniel, that 
responded with peculiar emphasis to His own 
knowledge of God and the Kingdom, that both 
was, and was to be, entrusted to Himself. What 
this was is, perhaps, better defined as the ¢van- 
scendence of the Kingdom than as the transcend- 
ence of God. 

To Jesus indeed, in His filial knowledge of God, 
His consciousness of a unique call and a cor- 
responding endowment, and the perfect repose 
of His Spirit upon the holy and loving will of 
His Father in heaven, the Kingdom that was His 
Father's gift was a present reality ; but we must 
not overlook the fact that all through His preach- 
ing—not simply in eschatological discourses de- 
livered towards the close of His life—He pre- 
sented the Kingdom in a futuristic aspect. 

Joh. Weiss has, I think, in some degree mis- 
placed the importance of this fact ; yet there are, 
perhaps, few passages in modern literature on the 
Gospels, that can so well bear re-reading and 


MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 381 


pondering as the part of Weiss’s book, in which 
he depicts the sense of the imminence of the 
Kingdom of God, which Jesus carried with Him 
all through His ministry. There is much, also, that 
is convincing in his protest against the confidence, 
with which many commentators, on the evidence 
rather of their own modern thoughts than of the 
Gospels, have insisted that a main idea of Jesus 
was, that the Kingdom of God is a thing of slow 
and imperceptible growth—in short, a develop- 
ment. No doubt, this idea is strongly suggested 
to us by the parabolic teaching, especially by 
such parables as the Mustard Seed and the 
Leaven, but that is partly explicable by the fact 
that, with or without a reference to these parables, 
we think of every kind of progress as proceeding 
in this way. I fully admit that parables like the 
Mustard Seed and the Leaven, and the Seed 
growing secretly in the ground, prove that Jesus 
contemplated and wished to prepare the disciples 
for long intervals of apparent Divine inaction in 
the preparation of the Kingdom, and I should 
agree that there is room enough in this blank 


for all that is of worth in our ideas of evolution. 
6 





82 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


At the same time, I think it must be allowed 
that the evidence of the Gospels is against the 
supposition, that Jesus’ conception of the Kingdom 
had much or any kinship with the modern idea, 
that human society is a vast organism, whose 
progress is necessarily slow and complicated. I 
think we must say that Jesus habitually thought, 
not of the analogy of the Kingdom to anything 
in this world, or even of its relations to men’s 
higher activities (as if it were in some sense a 
product of them), but rather of its unique and 
Divine transcendence. It wasa thing of mysteries 
that could not be known by those, who had no 
savour of the things of God, and, while it was the 
good pleasure of the Father to give it to His 
believing children, the treasures of it belonged 
solely to God, and the times of it were known — 
only to Him. 

I believe we must make more than Weiss 
is disposed to do of the passages, in which 
Jesus speaks of the Kingdom as something 
already present. The fact, that the Kingdom 
is not of this world, did not conflict with the fact, 
that it was already in substance given to those 


MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 83 


who had faith to receive it. But neither, on the 
other hand, did the fact, that it was already in 
substance given and present to the faithful in His 
own person and work, interfere with the certainty 
that there would be a future and glorious mani- 
festation of it, that would strike the eye of the 
world. 

This futuristic aspect of the Kingdom was 
certainly present to the mind of Jesus. It neces- 
sarily receives a certain prominence both in 
His general preaching and in His exhortations 
(especially towards the close) to the little flock 
of disciples ; but I cannot agree that it dominated 
His entire view of the life of faith in the way 
Weiss represents. The formula, Zhe Kingdom 
of God has come near (implying that it is still 
future), was the natural formula for evangelistic 
preaching. It had the advantage of embracing 
the two elements of grace and judgment that 
must enter into all preaching directed to a general 
audience. It conveyed good news to believing 
hearts prepared to receive it, and to those, who 
neither possessed the Kingdom nor thought of it, 
it conveyed warning. For to say, The Kingdom 





84 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


has come near, meant: Repent, or else prepare for 
instant judgment. 

But Jesus was not simply an evangelist. He 
was the pastor of faithful souls. His thoughts 
were more than could be well expressed in a 
formula, whose natural effect was to turn atten- 
tion from the affairs of the present. He taught 
the duties of citizenship to those to whom, as to 
Himself, the Kingdom was already present in the 
inner experience of faith. He offered a yoke of 
precepts to those who came to Him, and with it 
the rest of faith in a Father in heaven, whose love 
covered the wants of to-day and excluded anxiety 
about to-morrow. If we chose to put it in modern 
technical language, we might say that the tran- 
scendent God was to Him also the immanent God. 
But transcendent He was all the same, and, just 
because He was transcendent, therefore He was 
all-sufficient—as for the future, so also for the 
present. 

4. I venture to claim for the apocalyptic 
literature—at least as represented by the Book 
of Daniel—that it contained the suggestion of a 
new view of the world. 


MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 85 


Of purpose I say simply the suggestion, be- 
cause I believe that any evidence that could 
be adduced as to the views of the average 
believing Jew, who nourished his faith upon 
apocalyptic writings, would go to show, that 
he could not, and did not, define his expecta- 
tion otherwise than as a Jewish empire of the 
world with its centre at Jerusalem. This state 
of the case is not surprising. We may even say 
that it was inevitable. For, in point of fact, the 
testimony of the apocalyptist ceases with the 
announcement of the altogether wonderful advent 
of the Kingdom. He is certain that power will 
be taken from those, who are ignorant of the 
law of God or who despise it, and given to those 
who know it and keep it. He is certain of this, 
in spite of the most adverse circumstances, 
national and individual. For the advent of the 
Kingdom is a pure wonder. It is wrought by 
Him whose habitation is heaven and who rules the 
angelic hosts, and it has nothing to do with the 
arm of flesh. The apocalyptist sees the advent 
of the Kingdom, but, if we may put it so, he 
does not see the Kingdom itself, and, if he is 





86 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


wise like Daniel, he does not utter more than he 
sees. Hence, perhaps, in the main the curious 
fact, that a personal Head of the Kingdom other 
than Jehovah Himself—in other words, the 
Messiah—is by no means necessarily a part 
of the vision of the Advent common to all 
apocalypses ; and even when He does appear He 
is sometimes no more than a formal Figure, 
receiving, like the symbolic ‘one like unto 


’ 


a son of man” in Daniel vii. 13, the King- 
dom from the Ancient of Days, but not even 
performing the work of judgment upon the 
nations. 

Reserving further reference to this point to 
the fourth Lecture, I wish, at present, only to 
point out that, in spite of this almost total 
indefiniteness in the apocalyptic vision of the 
Kingdom, two things regarding it are perfectly 
plain from the general mode and circumstances 
of the apocalyptic presentation. 

A. The one is that the sphere of the King- 
dom’s realisation is this earth, The Kingdom, 
no doubt, comes from heaven, but it is given 
to men on earth. I am wholly inclined to 


MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 87 


agree with Titius,* whose four books regarding 
the Final Salvation contain the most courageously 
elaborate systematisation of eschatological ideas 
as they appear in the New Testament, that is 
likely to be attempted in our generation—that 
it is a fundamental mistake to suppose that an 
apocalyptist has necessarily any quarrel with 
the earth or the world as such. The earth may 
be renewed and transformed, and the powers 
even of the upper sphere may be shaken in 
the process (see Mark xiii. 24f., and parallels) ; 
but, after all, the earth remains the place to which 
the Kingdom comes. 

B. The other thing is that the Kingdom is 
one. In other words, it is a world - empire. 
No other view of it is possible. The whole 


1 Die neutestamentliche Lehre von der Seligkeit und thre 
Bedeutung fur die Gegenwart, Erster Theil: Jesu Lehre vom 
Reiche Gottes. Mohr, 1895. The other three parts deal respect- 
ively with the Pauline, Johannine, and Catholic (Ecclesiastical) 
conceptions of the final salvation. Titius is confident that Jesus 
expected the end of the world in His own time, but he holds that 
the expectation did not so possess His mind as not to pass readily, 
through His surrender to His Father’s will, into the larger reality. 
Such, at least, is the general impression of his views on the subject 
of Lecture III. (Part III.) I have received from a too cursory 
reading of what seems, in many ways, an important book. 





88 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


apocalyptic literature belongs to a period when, 
practically speaking, small kingdoms are no 
more. It is a day of empires, and the world is 
one. Now, I venture to think that this aspect 
of things reveals one of the points, at which 
the apocalyptic mode of presentation, as seen 
particularly in Daniel, must have possessed a 
certain attraction for our Lord. The Gospels 
inform us clearly enough that the imperial idea 
had for Him the attraction of a temptation, but 
it is not difficult to see that, while He rejected 
the showy forms of empire that had come and 
gone in this world, He believed in an empire of 
men, founded not upon the self-assertion of 
superior races or individuals, but upon their self- 
sacrifice, and maintained, not by force of arms, 
but by the eternal strength of righteousness and 
the overflowing omnipotence of humility and 
love. The world was far enough away from 
such a Kingdom. But such a Kingdom would 
come to the world in the good time of God. 
The power was already there in Himself and in 
all who believed with Him in a Father in heaven, 


to whom all things were possible. 


MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 89 


5. Too little space is left me to do more than 
touch, in closing this Lecture, on the point that 
lies nearest to the hearts of us all—the new view 
of life. 

We can hardly enter here, to much purpose, 
on so great a subject as that of the various 
adumbrations to the doctrine of individual 
immortality contained in the Old Testament. 
The details and qualifications of what I am 
about to assert, you, who enjoy the instruction 
on the Old Testament that is to be had in this 
College, know, or will soon know, incomparably 
better than I could tell you. I wish only at 
present to call attention to the general fact that, 
outside of the Book of Daniel, the Old Testament 
hardly teaches, and seldom even surely suggests, 
a doctrine of immortality, which implies a con- 
quest of death by individual personalities. Rarest 
of all is the suggestion of a resurrection of the 
body. 

This state of the case is explicable, in 
the main, by the fact that the unit for Old 
Testament faith is the nation rather than the 
individual. To the nation are given the pledges 





90 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


of the eternal faithfulness, in whose blessings 
the individual shares only as a member of the 
holy covenant people. Clearly, the immortality 
of a nation may easily enough seem to be 
vouchsafed by its continuity from generation to 
generation ; and it is instructive to notice that in 
the two passages that are perhaps most com- 
monly cited to instance the Old Testament 
idea of resurrection—Hosea vi. 2 and Ezekiel 
XXXvii.—the conception, clearly, is that of the 
resurrection of a nation. So far as I am aware, 
there is, outside of Daniel, only one passage 
in the Old Testament, that speaks directly of 
a bodily resurrection of individuals, taken singly. 
I mean Isaiah xxvi. 19; and of it it has to be 
said, that it occurs in a section of the Book of 
Isaiah (chapters xxiv.—xxvii.),! that is clearly of 


1 See, e.g., Duhm’s Commentary (Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht, 
Gottingen, 1892). Duhm remarks of the section, Isa. xxiv.-xxvii. : 
“It is considered on all hands of-a-piece and spurious. Indeed, 
Isaiah could as well have written the Book of Daniel as this 
piece” (p. 148). Dr. G. A. Smith allows the apocalyptic character 
of chap xxiv., and says that chaps. xxv.—xxvil. “ may naturally be 
held to be a continuation” of it. For, though historical allusions 
are, in the latter chapters, numerous, “they contradict one another, 
to the perplexity of the most acute critics” (“Isaiah” in the Bz- 
positors Bible, vol. i. pp. 416 and 428). 


MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE g1 


the nature of an apocalypse. In Daniel xii. 2 
the conception of a bodily resurrection of indi- 
viduals is distinctly expressed, and it became 
henceforward, in more or less limited form, a 
constant feature of apocalyptic books. The 
form of the doctrine, prevalent in the time of our 
Lord, and developed since the time of the Book 
of Daniel, is that of a twofold resurrection : (1) 
a resurrection of the faithful members of the 
covenant nation—a “resurrection of the just,” 
and (2) a general resurrection, preliminary to 
judgment in which all participate. 

Putting out of account the little Apocalypse in 
Isaiah, we may say that the peculiar interest of 
the idea of resurrection in Daniel, above all 
apocalypses, is that we see it there, as it were, 
in the moment of birth. There is no growth 
upon it of reflection and convention. The 
freshness of the conception is, however, also 
its limitation. There is no sign that the apo- 
calyptist contemplated a resurrection of all the 
past generations of faithful Israelites; and his 
words expressly exclude the idea of a unzversal 


resurrection. His message is to the generation 





92 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


that has seen the distress out of the midst of 
which his book is written. He speaks to those, 
who are living through the agony, and, if the 
modern commentators are right, he definitely 
predicts the end of the Syrian oppression in three 
and a half years (Dan. xii. 7). Before this time, 
however, there will be distress such as was never 
known since there was a nation, and many of 
those who saw the beginning of it — whether 
faithful or unfaithful—shall before the end sleep 
the sleep of death. The seer’s certainty of a 
resurrection is his certainty that death will neither 
rob those, who kept the covenant, of their share 
in the bliss of the coming Kingdom, nor shield 
those, who broke it, from the sting of reproach. 
The beauty and restraint of his language have 
seldom been equalled, and never (one may surely 
say) surpassed. ‘‘ Many of them that sleep in the 
dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlast- 
ing life, and some to shame and everlasting con- 
tempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the 
brightness of the firmament, and they that turn 
many to righteousness as the stars for ever 


and ever.” 


MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 93 


It would be wholly unwarrantable to assert that, 
when our Lord clearly perceived and accepted 
the will of His Father that He should accom- 
plish the Kingdom by way of suffering and death 
in Jerusalem, He fed His faith, that He would 
conquer death both for Himself and His followers, 
exclusively, or even perhaps mainly, on the Book 
of Daniel. The narrative of His encounter 
with the Sadducees, when they produced their 
fatuous puzzle of the woman with the seven 
husbands, would be alone sufficient to refute any 
such idea, and to prove that to Jesus the Old 
Testament Scriptures as a whole conveyed the 
pledge of the will and power of God to raise the 
dead who had lived unto Him. But there is, 
I venture to think, warrant for saying that, especi- 
ally in the last days of His life in the flesh, the 
testimony of this book was much to Him. There 
are really no facts better attested in the Gospels 
than that, a day or two before His death, Jesus 
spoke prophetically to some of the leading dis- 
ciples of the disasters that awaited the Jewish 
nation and capital in the near future ; that, at more 


than one point in this discourse, He quoted the 





94 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


Book of Daniel ;* and that, in general, the circum- 
stances of distress, which are depicted in the 
discourse, are closely similar to those in which, as 
we now know, the canonical Apocalypse was 
written. 

All this did not happen by chance. There 
was behind it, I venture to think, the recog- 
nition of a peculiar suitableness in the testimony 
of this book to a situation that was about to 
emerge, and that, to His vision of faith, already 
existed. The seer in Daniel contemplated a 
condition of the national fortunes, that seemed to 
him, in a secular sense, desperate. He had no 
vision, like that common to the former prophets, of 
a restored city and Temple, or even, perhaps, of the 
resurrection of a nation; and yet he knew that God 
would give the Kingdom to those, who kept His 
covenant; and he testified that death itself would 
not rob the faithful of their reward. In His 
discourse to the disciples Jesus had in view a 
condition of secular affairs, resulting from the 
nation’s unfaithfulness to God, equally hopeless ; 
and when, speaking to the disciples, He cited 


1 Mark xiii. 14-26; cp. Dan. xi. 31, vii. 13. 


MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 95 


Daniel, I understand Him to have meant, in 
effect, mainly that the pledge of deliverance, 
given in that ancient time to the faithful, was 
still valid. 

Perhaps it may seem to you to add a point of 
persuasiveness to this view of things, if I close, by 
setting side by side a verse of Daniel and two 
reported sayings of Jesus, not specially apocalyptic 
in form. In Daniel xii. 1, we read: ‘‘ There shall 
be a time of trouble, such as never was since there 
was a nation even to that same time: and at that 
time thy people shall be delivered, every one 
that shall be found written in the book.” 

“Rejoice not,” said Jesus to a group of 
evangelists who were filled with gladness at the 
success of their first mission and knew nothing 
of the evil days to come, “that the spirits are 
subject unto you; but rejoice that your names are 
written in heaven” (Luke x. 20). 

And again: “Fear not, little flock; it is your 
Father’s good pleasure to give youthe Kingdom” 
(Luke xii. 32). 


ae wan Se 

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a aera By 
6S 

Fr = 





ee 


BECTURE IIb 


THE DOCTRINE OF JESUS CONCERNING 
_ THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KING- 
DOM, CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO 
HIS ETHICAL DOCTRINE AND HIS 
MESSIANIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 





ee 





SS een See 


LECTURE 1fk 


HE DOCTRINE OF JESUS CONCERNING 
THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KING- 
DOM, CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO 
mS EPHICAL ‘DOCERINE AND, His 
MESSIANIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 


E enter, now, on a discussion that is full 

of perplexity, and in regard to whose 

issues in detail many views are possible. It 
would be very easy to occupy this Lecture with 
an attempt to mediate between the conflicting 
views of learned men, whom one would like to 
see atone. At the risk of incurring a verdict of 
neglect of duty, I propose to continue the plan 
of asking you to look at the subject, as directly 
as possible, with your own eyes. It is, I fear, 
an inevitable misfortune that you should, for the 
present, look at it also through mine. Our 


general object is to ascertain, if possible, the 
99 





100 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


mind of Jesus regarding the Consummation of 
the Kingdom. 

What did He actually think regarding the 
end of the world (as we know it), and the coming 
of the Kingdom? Can we state His doctrine 
to ourselves in any helpful way, apart from the 
pictures He usually employed; recognising, on 
the one hand, that, in the nature of the case, the 
pictures cannot be taken literally, and, on the 
other, that the pictorial language is a chief, if 
not the sole, authority? How does that doctrine 
stand to His ethical doctrine of the Kingdom, 
and to His own Messiahship ? 

I propose (as it were by anticipation) to 
summarise the teaching under three heads, each 
stating a contrast. 

I. The Kingdom of God, in its contrast with 
the collapsing world-order. 

II. The Messiah, in His contrast to the Prince 
of this world. 

III. The Kingdom come, in its contrast to 
the Kingdom coming. 

Shortly: The Kingdom, The Messiah, The 


Time, 


THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 1o1 


Perhaps, as we state these heads, and remember 
that our subject is the Eschatology of Jesus, 
we are conscious of a certain meagreness in the 
material offered to our thought. It seems to 
vanish, like the apocalyptist’s vision, to a point 
of glory. We see the heavens, and they are 
blue, but blank. The reason of this (I wish to 
say it at once) is, that we are trying, for the 
moment, to do what jis really impossible, namely, 
to consider the eschatological teaching of Jesus 
apart from His ethical teaching. When spiritual 
things are set forth in pictures, their spiritual 
reality is, in some respects, rather veiled than 
revealed. The apocalyptic pictures of the glorious 
coming Kingdom and the evil collapsing world 
may exist in the imagination, quite apart from 
any corresponding inner thought regarding the 
conduct of men, and the appeal to them of 
the Divine goodness and love. In reality, no 
such things exist, as the pictures in themselves 
suggest. They are as unthinkable as, say, an 
object held in the hand that has only one side. 
The Kingdom of God has, so to speak, its other 


side in the motives and conduct of good men; 





102 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


and the collapsing world is quite as much the world 
made dy evil men, as the fate prepared for them. 

In the thought of Jesus these two sides 
of the one reality—-we may call them the 
ethical and the eschatological— were never 
separate, though the emphasis He laid upon 
the transcendent character of the reality, and 
His unique power of speaking in pictures, tend, 
to a certain extent, to veil the fact from us. 
Nothing is more important in this investigation 
than to keep before us, not merely the reasonable 
hypothesis that this was so, but the certainty that 
it must have been so. Our investigation could 
have no conceivable interest for us unless we 
thought of the Kingdom (and were sure that 
Jesus also thought of it) as, in spite of its tran- 
scendence, an object of possible, and even in 
a substantial sense of actual, experience. We 
approach our subject, therefore, necessarily with 
the idea .that, while Jesus certainly spoke of the 
Kingdom as something still to come, He could 
not have done so, in any sense inconsistent 
with the belief and experience that it was 


already in a real way present. 


THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 103 


I. The text, which probably expresses to us 
most naturally Jesus’ thought of the transcendence 
of the Kingdom above the world-order, is that, 
in which He says to Pilate: ‘‘My Kingdom is 
not of this world. If My Kingdom were of this 
world, My servants would be striving that I 
should not be delivered to the Jews, but now 
is My Kingdom not from thence’”—z.e., it does 
not come from that quarter, the world, but from 
heaven (John xviii. 36). But, remembering that 
these words occur in the Fourth Gospel, we 
may prefer to look for the expression of the 
same thought in the Synoptic Gospels. We find 
it in the passage, Mark xii. 13 ff, and parallels, 
containing the incident of the tribute money, 
that bore the image of Czsar. The Pharisees 
wished to know whether He, whom the people 
seemed ready to accept as the Messiah, found 
anything offensive in this sign of the subjection 
of the Messianic people to a foreign yoke. 

It is best for our present purpose to look away 
from the sinister motive of the Pharisees, and 
the rebuke it doubtless received in the answer 
of Jesus. Apart from this, the words of Jesus 


104 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


seem clearly to mean: Why should not one be 
both a subject of Cesar, and a subject of God in 
the Messianic Kingdom? Where there are no 
points of contact, there can be no collision. The 
natures of the two jurisdictions are entirely 
distinct. Jesus was not concerned to say here 
what, according to the Fourth Gospel, He said 
in effect to Pilate—that the power of Czsar also 
was, in its own way, a trust from God. It was 
enough to have dealt with the point actually 
submitted, and wholly characteristic of Him to 
have said nothing to blunt the edge of the 
distinction between the things of Cesar and 
the things of God. One who was about to 
submit to death, at the hand of the world-power, 
in order to bring in the Kingdom of Heaven, 
could say no word in favour of political rebellion. 
If the Roman dominion was wrong, let them 
bear the wrong patiently, following a King 
who entered on His glory and theirs through 
suffering. 

The most patent proof that Jesus thought of 
the Kingdom as a transcendent thing, lies of 
course in His use of the apocalyptic imagery ; 





THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 105 


but I give the first place to the evidence of such 
a passage as that just referred to, because it is 
connected clearly with a practical situation. It is 
easy to move, in imagination, with the apocalyptic 
Seer in the heavenly regions, where all things are 
possible; but the essential point for us to deter- 
mine is, whether or not Jesus took seriously the 
thought imbedded in the apocalyptic pictures. 
As to what the thought is, there is no doubt. 
He Himself has referred us to the Book of 
Daniel, especially chap. vii. Here we have the 
contrast of the four kingdoms, whose symbols are 
beasts that rise out of the sea, with the final 
Kingdom, whose symbol is ‘‘one like unto a son 
of man” (verse 13). The four beasts represent the 
powers that have been successively the political 
masters of the chosen people, and of the world 
(as known to them) from the Babylonian exile to 
the apocalyptist’s own time. In origin, nature, 
and duration they are the opposite of the King- 
dom, whose symbol is a human form. In origin 
they are from beneath. He is from above. In 
nature they are savage and pitiless, torn, even 
while they last, with their own violence. The 


106 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


heavenly kingdom is humane. Its rulers are 
the saints, the worshippers of Jehovah, who keep 
His law. As to time, the dominion of the beasts 
is taken away after a season, but to the “one 
like unto a son of man” is given a universal 
and lasting dominion. 

We shall have occasion in the next Lecture to 
point out that the vision of the Seer, however 
impressive, has limitations, which could not have 
attached to the vision of Jesus. Yet we have 
only to compare it with the passage, in which the 
Master deals with the request of the sons of 
Zebedee for places of power in the Messianic 
Kingdom, to see how entirely the essential 
thoughts of the Daniel Apocalypse lent them- 
selves to the mind of Jesus. We see also how 
entirely in earnest our Lord is with the distinction 
marked in the apocalyptic name, ‘‘ Kingdom of 
the Heavens.” 

The apocalyptic language is of course, in its 
way, the most forcible expression of this contrast ; 
but then, it is language of the imagination, which 
leaves us asking for the corresponding reality. 
We do not ask in vain. In the request of the 






THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 107 


sons of Zebedee, Jesus saw and condemned the 
desire for honour and power, that should be be- 
stowed, as a mere gift, apart from service. Here 
precisely is the point, where the absolute difference 
between this perishing world and the lasting 
heavenly Kingdom can be stated, in terms of the 
human conscience and experience. 

It looks like a childish insistence on what is 
obvious, and yet, in view of the emphasis which 
writers like J. Weiss have laid on what has’ been 
called the biblical realism, it seems necessary to 
say that Jesus did not attach any sort of im- 
portance to the /oca/ contrast of earth and heaven. 
The essential distinction lay for Him, as it lies 
for us, in a region, contained indeed in time and 
space, in its manifestation conditioned by them, 
but, in its own nature, independent of them. 

This region (we must call it by some name) 
has two sides, and it touches us simultaneously 
with both. If we define these sides by refer- 
ence to their analogues in ourselves, we shall 
say that the one is the side of religious faith, 
the other that of moral experience. These 


two sides were always to Jesus — what they 





108 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


are to the modern Christian thinker — mutu- 
ally inclusive. He knew nothing of religion 
without morality, or of morality without re- 
ligion. The only difference between Him and a 
modern thinker is that, so far as we know, He 
never contemplated either side of this unity in 
its abstract separateness from the other. He 
certainly never contemplated the modern mon- 
strosity of a secular morality divorced from all 
hope of the Hereafter. In any case, He knew 
nothing of a shall de of the future, the vision of 
which was dissociated in His mind from an 
ought to be of the present. In other words, His 
ethical always kept pace with His eschatological 
teaching. 

We see this very clearly in the incident of 
the sons of Zebedee. Jesus had often spoken 
of the Kingdom of God in the future sense, 
and He had spoken of it as a gift. Why might 
not supremacy in it be simply gzvez to two par- 
ticular individuals— James and John? Jesus’ 
reply is to turn to the sons of Zebedee the 
side of His thought which they had neglected. 
They had asked, practically, for the kind of 


a ee 8D ee, 


THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 109 


thing that is seen every day in this world— 
power possessed and exercised apart from moral 
fitness ; and they had done so in implicit faith in 
the promise of Jesus regarding the Kingdom that 
should be. Jesus says to them, in effect, that they 
are presupposing in the Kingdom precisely the 
thing that shall not be. By implication, also, His 
answer contains the thought that it is just its 
indifference or opposition to what ought to be 
that makes the sentence of perishing passed upon 
the world-order so certain. Could we find clearer 
proof than this incident affords, that, in the teach- 
ing of our Lord, ethical principle dominated apoca- 
lyptic imagery, and not, as J. Weiss would almost 
have it, vzce versa? 

For all that, we must be sure that we do no 
injustice to that element in Jesus’ teaching, which 
Weiss very properly emphasises, namely, the ¢van- 
scendence of the Kingdom of God, and its gracious 
character. These two qualities seem to be cor- 
relative. If the Kingdom is transcendent, in the 
sense of being removed from the conditions of 
the natural order of this world, it is scarcely con- 
ceivable that it should be a mere product of 





IIO THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


the best actions of the best men. “I ‘cannot find 
anything in the language of Jesus to warrant the 
views of those who make Him responsible for the 
philosophical paradox that the Kingdom is both 
gift of God and product of men. v It is common 
to cite Matthew vi. 33, as if it contained this 
paradox. This, I venture to think, is unwarranted. 
Jesus is speaking not about producing the King- 
dom, but about an attitude of spirit suitable to its 
reception. Y Moral effort no more produces the 
Kingdom than anxious toil produces food and 
raiment; true as it is, in each case, that the 
effort and the toil are necessary. What Jesus 
seems to say is: ‘“‘Do not worry over things like 
food and raiment, as if these were all the worth of 
life, and God had no care for the interests they 
represent. Donot even worry over the Kingdom. 
Show only by the way you live—your regard for 
justice and mercy and faith, and your compara- 
tive indifference to the things which the men of 
this ‘age’ value—that what you supremely desire 
is the Kingdom of God and His righteousness 
(Scxavocdvn = possibly, rather, 7us¢zfication) ; do this, 
and not only will this supreme Divine good be given 


THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 11 


to your desire, but the lesser temporal goods will 
be thrown into the bargain (pocteOjcerar).” 

At the same time, the philosophic interpreters 
are wholly right in the perception that there is 
very close affinity between the condition of receiv- 
ing the thing (expressed in “seek ye”) and the 
thing itself, namely, the Kingdom of God; and, 
if writers like J. Weiss compel attention to the 
transcendent nature of the Kingdom as something 
wholly beyond the compass of human production— 
beyond even the productive power of the good 
will of a good man—writers of the modern philo- 
sophical type are also useful. They compel us 
to include in our definition of the Kingdom of 
God—and indeed to put in its very centre— 
a reference to the motives of conduct. 

After all, the renewed heaven and earth, of 
which the apocalyptist speaks, do not constitute 
the Kingdom that is not of this world. They 
are only its circumference. It takes nothing from 
the transcendence of the Kingdom, and it is the 
first step towards making it an object of real 
interest and aspiration, to say, that it is a power 
that acts primarily on the human will, and only 


i i THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


secondarily upon things that are independent of 
that will; just as it does not take from the glory 
of God, but only expresses it, to say that He is 
primarily holy love, and only secondarily sovereign 
power. 

It is worth remarking, by the way, that it is 
probably to this fact we are to look for the 
explanation of the practical disappearance of the 
phrase, Kingdom of God, from all the books of 
the New Testament outside the Synoptic Gospels, 
except the Apocalypse. The few occasions? on 
which, for example, Paul uses the phrase, may 
perhaps imply that it was still, in his time, the 
phrase which the early Christians were accus- 
tomed to use as a comprehensive description of 
the grace of God in the gospel; but when Paul 
said, “The Kingdom of God is not meat and 
drink ; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in 

1JIn his commentary on “Romans” in the Exfositors Greek 
Testament (in. loc., Rom. xiv. 17), Dr. Denney points out that, out 
of seven other passages, where Kingdom of God occurs in the 
Pauline writings, there are szz, in which it is clearly used in the 
transcendent sense—in one case (2 Tim. iv. 18) with the epithet, 
heavenly—against one (1 Cor. iv. 20), where it is used in a sense 


akin to that in the Synoptic Gospels. The six are: 1 Cor. vi. 9f., 
xv. 50; Gal. v. 21; 1 Thess. ii. 12 ; 2 Thess. i. 5; 2 Tim. iv. 18. 





THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 113 


the Holy Ghost” (Rom. xiv. 17), he gave prob- 
ably a sufficient reason for dispensing with the 
phrase in most places, where he had occasion to 
speak of just these things. 

It can hardly, I think, be doubted that to the 
average mind of the first century, whether Jewish 
‘or Gentile, the phrase would inevitably carry with 
it a medley of political and apocalyptic images, 
and so would easily lend itself to a fanatical use. 
If that were so, Jesus must have been aware of 
it; and it is a remarkable fact—a sign perhaps of 
His unique calm foresight—that, in spite of all 
the dangers of misunderstanding, He retained 
the phrase in habitual use. He not only said 
Kingdom of God, but, according to Matthew, He 
used the more distinctively Jewish and apocalyptic 
phrase, Kzugdom of the Heavens. In this study 
we must be ruled by His example, and we may 
close this paragraph by attempting a definition 
of the Kingdom of God in Jesus’ sense. We can 
neither define it, in the spirit of Hellenism, as a 
new order of society, in which their proper supreme 
place is given to justice and piety,—it may be 


this, but it is more,—nor can we define it, in the 
8 


= 


114 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


spirit of Jewish Apocalypse, as a system of things 
in which the happiness of good men is secured 
against all limitation or disaster, arising from 
causes operating in this world. It may be this 
also, but this is not the centre. The rules 
of right definition are, that it be sufficiently 
comprehensive and that it proceed from the 
centre. 

These conditions will, I venture to think, 
be fulfilled, if we say that the Kingdom of God 
is the sum of all the good things belonging to 
the supernatural life of God's children, and that 
these good things are, primarily, powers of holy 
truth and love acting on the human conscience 
and will, 

II. Our second topic in this Lecture is Jesus’ 
Conception of His own Person—in other words, 
His Messianic Consciousness. This subject will 
naturally enter into the discussion proposed for 
next Lecture—that, namely, regarding the title 
‘Son of Man.” Here it may be sufficient briefly 
to indicate how inextricably the doctrine of the 
Kingdom of God is, in the Gospels, bound up 
with the consciousness that Jesus is the Person, 






THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 115 


who brings the Kingdom to earth, and establishes 
it there. The Gospels persistently use words, 
or represent Jesus as using them, which imply 
that He stood in a unique relation to God, His 
Father, and to men, His brethren, in virtue of 
which He was the dispenser, to those who 
believed in Him, of the supernatural blessings 
of the heavenly Kingdom. Not the most 
sceptical student of the Gospels dreams of 
denying that, from their point of view, the 
doctrines of the Kingdom of God and of the 
double trusteeship of Jesus (that towards God 
and that towards men) stand or fall together. 
“To the Evangelists, and the New Testament 
generally, the Kingdom has its King—not simply 
God, but Jesus whom God has chosen; and the 
King— He whom God has chosen—has the 
Kingdom. ~There may be a question as to how 
precisely the Kingship is to be understood. That 
is a question of interpretation. There may be 
a still graver question, as to its precise historic 
equivalent in the consciousness of Jesus Himself. 
But, indubitably, to all the New Testament writers, 
Jesus is the King; and, from their point of view, 





116 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


it is practically one and the same thing to say, 
God reigns and Jesus reigns. 

It is obvious that we touch here on a matter of 
vital importance to our present study. _ If the testi- 
mony of the Gospels is to be, zz the main, accepted 
or rejected, it must be at this point and no other. 
For the centre of gravity in the Gospels is not, 
after all, the doctrine of the Kingdom of God. 
That phrase might, a fvio7vz, be considered as 
simply specialising a commonplace of philosophy, 
or apocalyptic, or political theory, peculiarly ger- 
mane to the Jewish mind. The centre of gravity 
is not even what, in the view of the Gospels, 
Jesus ¢aught regarding the Kingdom. Doubtless, 
He taught much to which the universal conscience 
of men will always respond. 

The centre of gravity in the Gospels is, without 
a doubt, what they teach regarding the peculiar 
relation of Jesus to the Kingdom. In other 
words, it is not their doctrine of the Kingdom, 
but their doctrine of the King. 

I will pause here only to say that it must 
be towards this point we must look for the 
reconciliation of the apparent dualism between 


THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 117 


the Kingdom, conceived as present, and the 
Kingdom conceived as future. It is in the con- 
sciousness of Jesus, if anywhere, that we may 
hope to find a point, at which the present will be 
seen to carry the future securely in its bosom, 
and the future will seem to be as the present. 
In other words, if we are able to see that what 
characterises Jesus is the double consciousness,— 
that He is the Messiah, z.e., the Person appointed 
to effectuate the Kingdom, and that He can 
bring His work to its glorious consummation 
only through a career of patient suffering and 
service,—there can be no need to puzzle over 
the paradox of Kingdom that zs, and yet is 
to be. The real puzzle is, not the ¢hzmg but the 
Person. 

iT We come snow to! the | very - critical 
question: What did Jesus actually think and 
teach regarding the ¢zme of the consummation ? 

I regard the data for settling this question, 
so far as it can be settled, as mainly the 
following :— 

1. There is our axiom of moral certainty, that 
Jesus could not have said, in one compass of 





118 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


reference, that He did not know the day and hour 
of the consummation, but that, yet, all the signs 
of it would be accomplished in that generation. 
No doubt, the earlier Evangelists would be able 
to reconcile these two statements. Probably 
they felt no difficulty about them, or, if they did 
feel a difficulty, they had a solution, Perhaps 
they were helped by a certain literalism: “ He 
said, indeed, that He did not know the day nor 
the Zour, but that has nothing to do with the 
certainty He expressed that all would happen 
within our own generation.” 

It cannot be said that this was in any way 
an unnatural position for the first generation of 
Christians to take up. It is probably nearer the 
truth to say, that it was an inevitable position. 
They saw the collapse of the Jewish State, and 
they felt the world sinking beneath their feet. 
If they felt any difficulty, it was not with the 
saying, All will happen in this generation, but 
with the other. With us the position is precisely 
the reverse. The explanation natural to the 
Evangelists is for us impossible and preposterous. 
If Jesus did not know the “day” nor the “hour,” 


THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 119 


neither did He know the ¢zme—whether “this 
generation” or the next. 

2. I am disposed to claim, as a second datum 
in this discussion, that there are no two sayings 
in the Gospels better attested than Mark xiii. 
verses 30 and 32 (cp. Matt. xxiv. verses 34 and 
36, Luke xxi. 32). For purposes of reference, 
we may call the former ‘This generation,” and 
the latter ‘‘“Not even the Son.” The canon, 
which Professor Schmiedel has laid down in his 
remarkable article ‘Gospels,’ in the Lucyclo- 
pedia Biblica, that those sayings of Jesus are to 
be considered genuine, which have the appear- 
ance of running counter to the view of His 
Divine dignity, which the Evangelists were con- 
cerned to uphold, is no doubt far from being the 
only canon for detecting genuineness. But it is 
unquestionably a vadzd canon. If Jesus had not 
actually said, ‘‘ Not even the Son,” no conceiv- 
able motive would have induced reporters, whose 
tendency was to believe in His literal omniscience, 
to represent Him as saying it. And just because 
He most certainly said, ‘‘Not even the Son,” 


’ 


the other saying, ‘This generation,” must have 


120 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


presented to the Evangelists an aspect of diffi- 
culty. On critical principles, this very difficulty 
is a strong guarantee that the saying is genuine. 

We may, therefore, take it as certain that in 
some connection or another Jesus said, with 
emphasis, “‘ Zhzs generation shall not pass till 
all these things be done.” The question is: In 
what connection, or with what precise meaning ? 

I am disposed to think that no answer to this 
question, other than conjectural, is possible ; and, if 
we exclude (as I have ventured to do) the view 
that Jesus could have meant to say, that the end 
of the world-order and the consummation of glory 
would, for certain, happen during the lifetime of 
the generation to whom He spoke, the question 
in what particular reference He uttered the saying, 
“This generation,” while it remains interesting, 
ceases to be momentous. The answer, z.é., even 
if attainable, does not strike one as likely to 
shed any fresh or important light upon the mind 
of Jesus. 

Yet it is worth remembering that the saying 
in question is not, or at any rate need not be 


regarded as, an isolated utterance. It may be 





THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 121 


considered rather as one of a class of which there 
are, at least, three other examples in the Gospels. 
The first is Matt. x. 23, where Jesus says to His 
missionaries: ‘‘ Verily I say unto you, ye shall 
not have gone over the cities of Israel, until the 
Son of Man be come.” The second is Mark ix. 1— 
cp. Matt. xvi. 28, “The Son of Man coming in 
His Kingdom,” and Luke ix. 27, “ Until they see 
the Kingdom of God”—“ Verily I say unto you, 
that there are some of those standing here, who 
shall not taste death, until they see the Kingdom 
of God having come (éAnAv@viav) in power.” And 
the third is Mark xiv. 62—cp. Matt. xxvi. 64, 
* From henceforth,” and Luke xxii. 69, ‘‘From now 
the Son of Man shall be sitting ”—“ Ye shall see 
the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of 
power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” 

These sayings are, practically, on the same foot- 
ing of certainty with ‘‘ This generation,” and they 
are sayings of the same kind. A c/ass of sayings 
undoubtedly possesses an interest, which can hardly 
belong to an isolated utterance. To find a clue 
to a class of sayings, suggests the revelation of a 


mental attitude of Jesus towards a wide range of 


122 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


things. Suppose we found it impossible to say, 
in regard to any one of these sayings taken by 
itself, what Jesus mast have meant, we may still 
be able, looking at them collectively, to reach a 
point of view from which we may see clearly 
what He may have meant by any one of them 
in particular, or even by ad of them taken 
together. 

This collective clue, it seems to me, begins to 
emerge, as we bring into view the data I have 
now to mention. 

3. We may describe them generally as the 
pervasive data, meaning by this that they do not 
consist of isolated utterances, but are expressive 
rather of a tone, that pervades the Gospels, either 
in whole, or in great part. 

(2) First, there is the undoubted fact that the 
preaching of Jesus began with an alarm note 
taken up from John the Baptist, to which He 
added, or (if it is preferred) which He converted 
into, a note of good news. Here is how it is put 
in Mark i. 4: ‘‘After John had been delivered 
up, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the good 
news of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, the 





THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 123 


Kingdom of God has come near; repent and 
believe in the good news.” 

The point to which I ask attention, is that 
the note sounded in these words is pervasive. 
Whether or not Jesus had definite convictions 
regarding the end or transformation of the 
world in a physical sense, He was suve that 
the Kingdom of God was at hand. It was not 
a surmise, it was more than a prophecy. The 
Kingdom had really come upon that genera- 
tion. There were choice souls, who saw the 
proof of its powers in works of healing, and there 
was One, to whom it was given to move the finger 
of God and to see Satan fall from heaven.* In 
other words, the Kingdom was not only coming, 
it had in substance really arrived. 

We are inquiring as to likelihoods concerning 
what Jesus may have said about the end of the 
world. If He said, continually, the Kingdom is 
coming, from the point of view of One who already 
experienced and exercised its powers, He must 
have had a corresponding persuasion that the 
worldly order, in so far as it was opposed to the 


1 See especially Luke xi. 20(cp. Matt. xii. 28 f.), xvii. 20 f., x. 17 ff. 





124 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


Kingdom, was about to collapse. The casting 
out of the unclean demons, that made the bodies 
of men the habitation of disease and corruption, 
was a sure sign that the Prince of this world would 
be cast out. Certainty regarding this latter crisis 
was the negative side of His certainty as to the 
power and will of God to give the Kingdom to 
His poor ones, and to satisfy the hungry with the 
bread of righteousness. 

Now, this must have given to the speech and 
bearing of Jesus a certain other-worldliness. His 
disciples, He said, were to rejoice in nothing 
but that their names were written in heaven. I 
consider it certain that He must have given 
both to them and to others the impression that 
He reckoned the days of this world, as they 
knew it, to be numbered. 

The question, important for us to ask, is: Did 
He become a kind of speaking Apocalyptist, 
and commit Himself in any degree to calcu- 
lations as to physical details? My answer is, 
that it would take a good deal more evidence 
than is contained in the eschatological utterances 
reported in the Gospels, to make it seem in the 


THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 125 


least degree likely that He did anything of the 
kind. There is no reason to doubt the testimony 
of the Synoptists, that He described the collapse 
of the world in terms suggested by the canonical 
Scriptures." There is the same propriety or even 
inevitableness in His doing this, as there is in 
His shaping the figure of the glorified Messiah 
according to the vision in Daniel. It is also 
according to probability, I should say it was 
inevitable, that He should have made the cosmi- 
cal catastrophe, or transformation, practically co- 
incident with the manifestation of the Son of Man 
in the glory of the clouds. —The transformation 
of the world and the coming of the Kingdom 
are correlates in His mind. ~ But, then, it is pre- 
cisely of the time of the concluding glory that 
He confesses ignorance ; and, if He was ignorant 
of the one term in this correlation, He was 
ignorant also of the other. 

It seems to me that, on Zfzs point, this is about 
as far as we can go with certainty. We may 
take it for certain, that Jesus did not bind Himself 
to the assertion, that the end of the world and 

1 Cp., e.g., Mark xiii. 24f. with Joel 11. 30f. and Hag. ii. 21. 





126 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


the supreme manifestation of the Messianic glory 
would take place within the lifetime of His own 
generation. 

Those, who choose to go beyond this, and 
to say that, while not formally expressing it, 
Jesus privately believed it, and sometimes in 
speaking to the disciples seemed to assume it, 
certainly provide an adequate explanation of the 
fact that the first generation of Christians held 
this expectation. But it is an explanation, to 
which we should resort only under stress of 
necessity. The natural and reverent supposition 
surely is, that the vision of Jesus, even on earth, 
was not limited in ¢4zs, or perhaps in amy respect, 
in quite the same way as that of His most faith- 
ful followers. The utmost, it seems to me, which 
we can allow ourselves to say, in the direction of 
the opinion in question, is, that there is no sure 
evidence that Jesus sought to undermine the 
assumption of His followers, that the final glory 
would be manifested in their day ; and even this 
we may fairly qualify with the remembrance, 
that a main motive of the principal eschato- 
logical discourse, reported by the Synoptists, is 


THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 127 


to warn the disciples against premature expec- 
tations. 

But we have still to face the “‘ This generation ” 
saying, and the class of sayings of which the 
testimony before Caiaphas is the most remarkable 
instance. 

I propose to deal with the difficulties raised by 
these sayings in connection with the two data 
of the class Jervasive which remain to be men- 
tioned. 

(4) I venture, then, to mark as the sure datum, 
in whose light we must find a context for the 
“This generation” saying, the fact that, at least 
towards the close of His ministry, Jesus appeared 
as a prophet of judgment against Jerusalem and 
the Jewish nation. The question, at what point in 
His career Jesus took this attitude, is clearly con- 
nected with a question, which need not concern us 
here, namely, whether He perceived from the first, 
or only a little before the occasion of the solemn 
interrogation of the disciples at Caesarea Philippi, 
the necessity of His own death. Personally, I 
incline to the latter view, although it involves the 


disallowance of an absolutely pervasive character 


128 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


to the datum with which we are dealing. We are 
seeking for things that are certain, and there is 
nothing more certain in the evangelic record than 
that, before the end of His ministry, Jesus uttered 
over Jerusalem the wail of a patriot and the woe 
of a prophet. 

We may define the certainty more closely. 
His prophetic woe connected itself directly with 
nothing political There is no likelihood in, 
certainly no evidence for, the idea that Jesus 
even once in public discourse took up the 
burden of His people on its political side, and en- 
larged on the hopelessness and folly of rebellion 
against the Roman power. We may safely say that 
no minister of God ever left secondary things 
more strictly alone. The point at which He 
levelled the thunderbolt of the judgment of truth 


1 The strongest statement of the opposite case, with which I am 
acquainted, is that of Dr. James Denney in the chapter in his 
Death of Christ (Hodder & Stoughton, 1902), which deals with the 
Synoptic testimony (especially the baptism of Jesus and the saying 
about the Bridegroom being taken away). There is perhaps hardly 
evidence to warrant us in saying more than that from the first (the 
Baptism and Temptation) Jesus faced the osszbzlity, if not the 
likelihood, of a tragic issue to His earthly mission. From the 
beginning, the Shepherd identified Himself with His “lost sheep.” 
Their fate would be His—as God might will—even unto death. 





; \ 
; 
' 


THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 129 


was not the political fanaticism that was fer- 
menting in the nation, but the pretentiousness 
and externalism of its religion. It was not simply 
that the Pharisaic ideas of the righteousness and 
worship, which God required, were inadequate. 
They were ideas, that led, more or less directly, 
to the evasion of the Divine will. The worship 
which embodied them was not only a slighting of 
God ; it was apostacy. For evasion is apostacy 
in its most subtle form. 

In one sense the datum with which we are 
dealing may be termed pervasive. Jesus was 
never in two minds about the righteousness 
of the Scribes and Pharisees. From the first 
He regarded it as something to be not only 
exceeded, but corrected. As it stood, it had 
nothing to do with the Kingdom of God. 

It is at least possible, I should be disposed to 
say probable, that He hoped at first for the con- 
version of His people apart from any purga- 
torial fire of disaster and revolution. Might there 
not be in the prophetic word alone a force suffi- 
cient to detach the Jewish people, and especially 


their leaders, from an unfruitful and mischievous 
9 





130 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


legalism? In suffering He learned that His 
people did not know the day of their visitation. 
He read the judgment of His nation in their re- 
jected blessing. From this moment all His 
words about His nation were cast in the mould 
of a prophecy of doom. . Jerusalem was tumbling 
to its destruction. It was not only credible but 
certain that the end was near. It was His way 
to speak in pictures and to quote Scripture. 

It is to me, therefore, entirely credible, that apart 
from a descent into secondary political details, 
speaking simply as a prophet and as the Messiah, 
He should have pointed dramatically to the 
Temple and said: ‘“‘ By and by, yea within this 
generation, not one stone shall be left upon 
another. By and by, even you shall see Jeru- 
salem hedged in with heathen armies, as in the 
days of Isaiah and Jeremiah. By and by, you 
shall see in this temple the ‘abomination of 
desolation’ of which we read in Daniel; and 
shall know that Jerusalem is no safe place for 
the chosen ones of God.” 

No doubt, this prophecy had a literal fulfil- 


1 Dan. Xi. 31 5 ep: vill. 13. 


THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 131 


ment. It was a case, in which picture and 
reality ran inevitably together. But surely we 
may say that what occupied the mind of Jesus 
was not a series of probable, or even certain, 
historical and political events, but rather simply 
the certainty He had from His Father, that, 


if His own days on earth were numbered, so 


also were those of the nation and the system, 
that were casting Him forth. For, in fact, He 
saw already what the men of that generation 
were to see in sensible forms. To Him, the 
Temple, as it stood, represented a dead system, 
that would fall by its own weight. The Jewish 
religion was no acceptable service. It was a 
heathen mummery.’ The Abomination, that made 
desolate, stood already in the Holy Place. Let 
that old Temple be destroyed, and in two or 
three days*—let alone a generation—God would 
raise up another, indestructible, and not made 
with hands. 

It seems to me, then, that we are on entirely safe 
ground, when we regard the so-called great escha- 
tological discourse (Mark xiii.= Matthew xxiv.) 


1 Matt. vi. 7. 2 Hos. vi. 2; cp. Mark xiv. 58, John ii. 19. 





132 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


as mainly a number of utterances, regarding the 
hastening decay of the Jewish legal system, which 
the Evangelists have strung together with, in 
the main, real insight, but also with some natural 
misconception, and with an obvious desire to point 
the moral of things that were happening at the 
time they wrote. ‘‘ Not one stone upon another,” 
“the Abomination of desolation,” “ Jerusalem com- 
passed with armies” (this only in Luke xxi. 20), 
“this generation,” “where the carcass, there the 
vultures,” are vivid plastic utterances, saying only 
the one thing, viz., that the nation and system 
which reject God are already rejected by Him, 
that what Zas been in this regard will be again, 
and that the sensible proof of it will be swift 
and sure. 

There is no warrant to speak of any of 
these utterances, at least in their essential 
features,—not even ‘‘ Jerusalem compassed with 
armies,’ —as prophecies Jost eventum. But neither 
is it altogether right for us to treat them as the 
Evangelists did. There is, to say the least, not 
sufficient evidence to warrant us in assuming, as 
they assumed, that Jesus regarded the fall of the 


THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 133 


Jewish State as an event indistinguishable in time 
or essence from the end of the world. And, even 
if we consider ourselves warranted in assuming 
that His imagination in its earthly limitation 
necessarily placed the latter event within the 
compass of His own generation, or that His 
prophetic vision was closely conformed to the 
canonical model and looked straight across the 
valley of present trouble to the mountain of the 
Lord and the eternal light (Isa. ii. 2 ff.), these 
somewhat precarious tenets do not carry us the 
length of saying that, in spite of His assurance 
that He was ignorant of the “day” and “hour” of 
the Son of Man, in spite of His statements that 
the Kingdom would be preached to all nations 
and would be given to those who bore its fruits, 
in spite of His careful warnings against false 
Christs and premature expectations, He gave 
the disciples the solemn assurance that every 
symptom of the consummation, and the con- 
summation itself, would fall within their own 
time. 

It seems to me that, even if we had in the 
Gospels a much more ample testimony in favour of 





134 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


the assertion that He said any such thing (instead 
of a verse or two, representing the natural miscon- 
ception of men who wrote within a generation 
from Jesus’ death, and felt the world, as they 
had known it, sinking beneath their feet), we 
should have a right to feel that the thing asserted 
was incredible. And we should profitably re- 
member that in a discussion, regarding any fact 
of real importance in the life of Jesus, the decisive 
factor is not any arithmetical balance between 
reports of what He said and reports of what 
seems the opposite, but rather our certainty— 
arising from our knowledge of His character— 
of what He must have thought and meant. It 
is useful to remember that, even in matters of 
criticism, the supreme evidence is Jesus Himself 
—Jesus as we know Him here and now, Jesus 
as we know Him in God’s providence and by 
God’s Spirit through these Gospels. 

(c) There remains, however, still something 
to be said—as it were—from the other side. 
Suppose we grant that Jesus neither expressly 
nor in thought synchronised the fall of the Jewish 
State and the collapse or final transformation 


THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 135 


of the world, it by no means follows that He 
considered the demolition of the Jewish system 
simply as a woful event in a wholly indefinite 
series of preparations for a far-off end. The 
Gospels give us, it seems to me, irresistibly 
the impression that Jesus must have attached, 
and that with emphasis, some sort of finality— 
in relation to the whole world and the coming 
of the Kingdom—to the downfall of the Jewish 
State; in particular, the downfall of Jewish 
legalism and religious supremacy. 

Quite apart from specially eschatological texts, 
this impression comes to us along with our feeling 
of the deadliness of the conflict, in which Jesus 
found Himself engaged with the religious authori- 
ties of Jerusalem. The conflict was deadly, not 
simply in its murderous issue on the Cross, but 
in the passionate tension of His own spirit. 
If we might put it exegetically, the finality is to 
be found rather in chapter xxiii. than in chapter 
xxiv. of Matthew’s Gospel. We may perhaps 
say that chapter xxiv. is scenery, and chapter 
SxS text, 

One gets from chapter xxiii. the impression 


136 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


that, to Jesus’ mind, there was no sin in the 
world worth speaking about compared with the 
sin of His own nation. They bear the fate 
and the guilt of the rest of the world. They 
bar the entrance of others into the Kingdom. 
Children of hell, they draw their proselytes into 
closer folds of flame. Murderers and children 
of murderers, they bear the guilt of all the 
“righteous blood shed upon the earth.” And 
Jesus did not speak of these things as a mere 
spectator, or even as a prophet like Jeremiah, in 
whose bones the word burned. He spoke as 
One, who saw and felt the power of murder and 
hell let loose upon Himself. 

We may well feel that we have no measure for 
the moral passion of Jesus. It takes us probably 
as far beyond our depth as the mystery of His 
unique Sonship. 

But the records permit us in some degree to see 
the perspective, in which He viewed His environ- 
ment in relation to the purpose of God. Four 
things stand out clearly : 


i. Firstly, there is His recognition of the © 


peculiar favour shown to Israel. The Jews 







’ 
“a 
a 
«4 
a 
he 
L 
“4 
i) 


oe): 


THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 137 


were the vineyard of the Lord, planted and 
cherished with peculiar care. They were the 
heirs of the Kingdom. To them God sent the 
prophets, and, last of all, His own Son. 

li. Secondly, there is His recognition of the 
failure of Israel. The vineyard was fruitless. 
Those, who garnished the tombs of the prophets, 
were the children of those who murdered them. 
They would reveal their kinship in the murder 
of the Son. This act would fill the cup of 
iniquity to the full. No greater resistance of 
the Divine will was possible upon earth. 

Hence. there can be no hesitation in ad- 
mitting that to Jesus, in the last weeks of 
His life, the near advent of the day of judg- 
ment for the Jewish nation, involving it in many- 
sided ruin, was solemn and terrible certainty. He 
saw this ruin. He painted it in sensible forms. 
He had a vision of the demolished Temple, and 
Jerusalem compassed with armies. The prophecy 
had in it no artificial apocalyptic reckoning. It 
came purely from the spirit and supremacy of His 
holiness. 

iii. Now, if we put, side by side with this 


138 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


prophecy, His clear recognition of the Pro- 
vidence that had placed Israel in a position of 
superior spiritual advantage in relation to the 
rest of the world, we shall not hesitate to 
say, thirdly (even if there were not chapter 
and verse for it in the great eschatological 
discourse), that He must have judged that, in 
compassing its own ruin, Israel was hastening 
catastrophe for the whole 1 world. When, in the 
Fourth Gospel,’ Jesus represents His death, on its 
spiritual side, as a contest for possession in the 
world between Himself and the Prince of Dark- 
ness, we need not settle the question as to the 
strict historicity of the Zogza in John before 
being certain that the thought, thus expressed, 
is true to the mind of Jesus. On its negative 
side, the thought is clearly that the world has 
reached its last stage of corruption. Some sort 
of cosmical collapse or transformation must there- 
fore be in near prospect. 

Taken in itself, the conception of such a 
collapse awes and overwhelms the imagination. 
“The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall 


1 John xvi. 11; cp. Luke xxii. 53. 






ee 


THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 139 


not give her light, and the stars of heaven shall 
fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be 
shaken” (Mark xiii. 24f.). The imagery is 
impressive, without being in the least degree 
extravagant. It is to me wholly credible that, 
when our Lord was depicting the fall of the 
Jewish nation in terms that touched literal as 
well as spiritual fact, He should have added just 
such an impressive indication, through Scriptural 
symbols, of the fact that such a catastrophe would 
shake the whole world. Only here, it seems to 
me, we have the right to say that, to His own 
consciousness, the words used had no relation to 
literal fact, or, at any rate, no such relation to it as 
the imagery, in which He depicted the destruction 
of Jerusalem. 

It will hardly be called mere conjecture to say 
that One, who had found instances of faith among 
Gentiles such as He had not found in Israel, did 
not think so badly of the rest of the world as He 
did of His own nation. Did He not say in so 
many words that the Kingdom would be taken from 
the Jews and given to a nation yielding its fruits ?* 


1 Matt. xxi. 41, 43. 


140 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


It will hardly seem a straining of matters to say, 
that He found relief for His despair of the Jews 
in His hope for the Gentiles. 

iv. Hence, fourthly, while it seems true to say 
that the act of submissive faith, in which He looked 
forward to His own violent death, carried with it 
the conviction that the nation, which compassed 
His murder, stood within measurable distance 
of its own irretrievable fall, it is at least as true to 
say, that He conceived His death, on its positive 
side, as setting free a power, which should begin 
straightway to work for the redemption of the 
world. His certainty, in this reference, had little 
in common with the equipment of an apocalyptic 
writer. It was no uncertain light reflected from 
a past artificially treated as future. It was a cer- 
tainty peculiar to Himself, and proceeding from 
His consciousness of being the Executor of God’s 
purpose. When He accepted the decree of death, 
He knew that He had reached the last stage in 
the fulfilment of that purpose. It was verily the 
Last Time. His death would bring life to the 
world. a 

It appears to me, therefore, that the sayings, 






—5 > a + > 
2 i Se bo eee 


THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 141 


in which He seems to depict the collapse of 
the world, represent simply the obverse side of 
His conviction—a conviction of which the most 
precious thing in the universe, viz., His own life, 
was the pledge—that, behind the veil of His flesh 
rent in the sacrifice for sin, there opened out for 
humanity a new and glorious career, in which it 
should be seen, even by the men of that generation, 
to start forward, vested in measureless powers of 
truth and holiness and love. 

No criticism will ever shake the evidence that 
Jesus Zad this conviction. Doubtless, the verbal 
testimonies to it are not frequent in our authori- 
ties. There are things of which men will hardly 
speak, for which yet, perchance, they are found 
willing to die. 

Jesus was no speaking apocalyptist. His 
hope for humanity was written on the heart 
broken for sin and offered to God. His prophecy 
for a redeemed world is to be read out of His 
prophecy for Himself. ‘Ye shall see,” He said 
before Caiaphas, “the Son of Man sitting on the 
right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of 


heaven,” 





rude 







yy 
y 


THE ESCHATOLOGY — 


F 







borrowed metaphor! Yes, but He who used 
metaphor has, as it happens, the thing, wh 
meaning and worth the world, even at this d at 
is only in process of learning. 





LE CLURE LV: 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN.” 


143 








BECTURE fv. 
fee Eth: “SON. OF. MAN.’ 


N about forty? different occasions, according 

to the Synoptists, Jesus spoke of Himself 

in the third person under the title “Son of Man.” 
The title was used only by Himself. It was 
assigned without explanation, and it occasioned 
no surprise. It was Jesus’ own way of expressing 
the dignity of One, who did the work of the 
Messiah. In other words, the Synoptists convey 
the impression—and they intend to convey it— 
that throughout His public ministry Jesus called 
Himself by a title, that had Messianic significance 


1 The best monographs in English on the subject of this Lecture 
are probably Dr. Driver's article “Son of Man” in Hastings’ Bzdle 
Dictionary, and the corresponding article of Professor N. Schmidt 
in the Excyc. Bibl. 1am far from agreeing with the findings of the 
latter, and I attach more value than Dr. Driver does to those of 
Fiebig. 

2 See Appendix C, I. 

10 





146 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS” 


at least for Himself, and was associated in His 
mind with the “one like unto a son of man,” who 
comes with the clouds in Daniel’s vision of the 
final Kingdom. It would be too much to say 
that the Synoptists represent our Lord’s general 
hearers, or even the disciples, as clearly under- 
standing the official meaning of the title. Their 
silence on the point, taken along with their re- 
presentation of the perplexity of the multitude 
about Jesus, is evidence rather to the contrary. 
On the other hand, there is no hint that the per- 
plexity of the people had anything to do with 
Jesus’ use of the title “Son of Man.” It is as if 
the narrators intended to say that what the title © 
meant to Jesus, tat, so far as they could under- 
stand it, it meant also to His hearers. 

The title is peculiar to the Gospels. Except 
in the record of Stephen’s martyrdom,} and in 
two passages of the Apocalypse of John,’ it 
does not occur in the other books of the New 
Testament. The exceptions, moreover, are more 
apparent than real. Stephen’s words are of the 
nature of a citation of Jesus’ own testimony to 


1 Acts vil. 56. 2 Rev. i. 13, xiv. 14. 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 147 


Caiaphas.* He means to say that that testimony 
is being verified in his own experience. The 
phraseology of the Apocalypse is obviously 
modelled on Daniel, and does not suggest a title. 
Up to less than ten years ago the problem con- 
nected with this title, while of course profound, 
was in form simple. All that was asked was, 
What did Jesus mean by calling Himself the Son 
of Man? Nowadays, at least for the moment, 
things wear a different aspect. We are apt to 
lose sight of the profundity of the problem in its 
plurality. For the question is no longer one, but 
three. The Fzrs¢ question is: (1) Did Jesus 
really call Himself by any such title? or, rather, 
Could He have done so in the language He 
presumably used—viz., Aramaic? When we have 
answered this question affirmatively, we are then 
permitted to ask, Secondly: (2) Did He do so 
habitually, and throughout the whole course of 
His ministry, as the Gospels seem to represent? 
Finally: On the understanding that we have 
mastered the difficulties which have led some 
scholars to answer the first question in the 
1Cp. Luke xxii. 69 with Acts vii. 56. 





148 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


negative, we are permitted to ask the one 
question that had any existence or interest for 
scholars like, say, Ewald or Keim: (3) What 
did Jesus mean by calling Himself the Son of 
Man ? 

I. In regard to question 1, the negative position 
has been taken, so far as I am aware, on philo- 
logical grounds only. It has been asserted with 
confidence by Lietzmann* and Wellhausen® that 
Jesus could not have used in Aramaic any phrase of 
self-designation of which “the Son of Man,” in the 
emphatic, significant sense of our Greek Gospels, 
would be the proper translation ; and even a critic 
like Fiebig,* whose phenomenal researches in docu- 
ments illustrating Aramaic usage have led him 
on this question to essentially conservative results, 
goes so far with the negative critics as to allow 
that the proper rendering of the phrase Jesus used 


—Bar énashi’, or Barnashi’—is simply 0 avOpamos 


1 Der Menschensohn, ein Beitrag zur neutestamentlichen Theologie. 
Mohr, 1896. 

2 Skizzen u. Vorarbeiten, Heft vi. Berlin, 1899. : 

3 Der Menschensohn Jesu Selbstbezeichnung mit besonderer Beriick- 
sichtigung des aramdischen Sprachgebrauchs fiir “ Mensch.” Mohr, 
19ol. 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 149 


(=The Man). Clearly, a position like Fiebig’s 
does not, in any way, compromise the trust- 
worthiness of the Gospels. If it is really the 
case that Jesus spoke of Himself in the third 
person, and that He did so repeatedly and in 
such terms as eventually to convey to the 
circle:of believers the double idea that the King- 
dom of God was adapted to the needs of men, 
and that He Himself was the altogether unique 
Man indicated in prophecy and chosen to pos- 
sess the Kingdom and administer its blessings, it 
cannot be said that our Gospels are on this matter 
really misleading. 

If, on the other hand, we follow Lietzmann and 
Wellhausen, it is at the cost of a pretty severe 
shock to our sense of the trustworthiness of the 
Gospels. We commit what Wellhausen himself 
describes as a ‘‘Gewaltstreich,” or our de force. 
Briefly (but not, I hope, unfairly stated), the posi- 
tion of Lietzmann and Wellhausen is something 
like this: The natural and practically the only 
equivalent for 6 vids tod avOpémov in Aramaic would 
be Barnash, or, in the status emphaticus, Barnisha’. 


But it is clear from the usage of Aramaic, as 


150 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


seen even in the Book of Daniel, and more 
indubitably in the Talmudic writings, that this 
phrase, even in the status emphaticus, is too in- 
definite in meaning to be usedasatitle. It means, 
according to the context, a@ man, some one, any 
one, men generally, but never, with any emphasis, 
the particular man. It is preposterous to sup- 
pose that Jesus habitually spoke of Himself in the 
third person as Somebody. 

‘How did the misrepresentation, or, at least, 
the misunderstanding, of the Greek evangelists 
arise? There is a substratum of history in it. 
Jesus more than once (the Gospels themselves 
allow it) referred to the consummation of the 
Kingdom in terms of Daniel’s vision (Dan. vii. 13). 
Without any special intention of referring to 
Himself," He spoke of the Son of Man coming 
in the clouds of heaven. Believers of course 
applied the prophecy to Jesus Himself, and 


’ 


the phrase ‘Son of Man” appealed especially 
to Gentile converts with a tinge of Greek 


philosophical culture. It was believed almost 


1 Wellhausen notices, ¢.g., that the form of the saying in Mark 
xiii. 26 is far from suggesting a personal reference. 


—a 
Gee See * 






PT oe eat or 


a a a 


4. 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” I51 


from the first that Jesus had spoken of Himself 
latterly as the Son of Man of Daniel's vision. 
Out of this there grew easily the tradition, 
fostered by the humanism of Gentile believers, 
that Jesus habitually spoke of Himself in the 
taird person as the Messianic Son of Man, even 
in connections that suggested anything but the 
Messianic glory. It became in fact the custom— 
we can see it at work in the structure of our 
Gospels '—even where the oral or written tradi- 
tion made Jesus say simply J or me—for an 
Evangelist to substitute 6 or tov 0. 7. a. 

It is obvious that the main prop of this critical 
structure is a philological presupposition in refer- 
ence to the Aramaic language—or a particular 
dialect or period of that language—which even one, 
who is, alas, only a layman in such matters, must 
be allowed to pronounce, on the showing of the 
authorities themselves, to be highly precarious. 

I fully concede Holtzmann’s? right to say that 
the questions raised or suggested by Wellhausen 


1Cp., e.g., Mark viii. 27 with Matthew xvi. 14. Matthew has 
tov v. T.a. where Mark has simply pe. 

* Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Theologie. Leipzig (Mohr), 
1897. 


PPO: Ae TY Oe SO eae ee a eee ee ee a 
CEN eee eo or el ee 


152 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


and others in reference to the phrase Son of Man 
are among the most perplexing of all connected 
with the New Testament. But there are many 
reasons, quite apart from the trustworthiness of 
the Gospels, for refusing to cut the knot in the 
way proposed by Wellhausen. Let me briefly 
mention three of these, remarking that I attach 
decisive importance only to the third. 

1. While it is highly probable, it is not certain 
that in His public discourses Jesus habitually 
used Aramaic. Preaching to the mixed popu- 
lations of Galilee and the Decapolis, it is probable 
that He sometimes, and possible that He habztually, 
used Greek. The efforts recently made by Dal- 
man,” Arnold Meyer,® and others, to give us the 
probable Aramaic equivalents of some of the 


1 The most strenuous advocate of the theory that Jesus used 
Greek in public discourse was the late Professor Roberts, of St. 
Andrews. The argument is conducted with great erudition, and 
may be studied, with profit perhaps, specially by those who too 
readily assume that the weight of probability is all on the other 
side. (Greek the Language of Christ and His Apostles (2nd ed.), 
Longmans, 1888 ; A Short Proof that Greek was the Language of 
Christ Gardner, Paisley, 1893.) 

2 Die Worte Jesu. Leipzig (J. C. Hinrich), 1898 (English Trans- 
lation, T. & T. Clark). 

3 Die Muttersprache Jesu. Mohr, 1896. 





THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 153 


sayings of Jesus, are certainly interesting. But, 
even granting that they are occasionally success- 
ful in showing the halting or even misleading 
quality of the Greek equivalent of some proverb, 
we cannot be certain that it is not Jesus Himself 
who is responsible for the halt. Must not this 
ministering ‘““Son of Man” have known some- 
thing of the limitations imposed by the necessity 
of addressing men of foreign race and speech? 
It is perhaps possible to be satisfied in one’s own 
mind that the Carpenter of Nazareth, who recog- 
nised that His mission was confined to the “lost 
sheep of the house of Israel,” spoke habitually in 
private, and, where it was possible, in public, in 
the native tongue of His people, and still to 
admit it as only probable, and not “proven,” 
that it is His translators (and not He Himself) 
who are responsible for the Greek form of His 
sayings which we find in our Gospels. 

I agree, however, with Dr. Driver, that the sup- 
position that Jesus may have used Greek is only 
the last fortress in the line of defence against the 
attack of Wellhausen. We are far from being 


under constraint to let the proposition pass, that 


154 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


Jesus could not have said in Aramaic what is 
fairly rendered by Zhe Man, or even The Son 
of Man. 

2. Suppose we allow that, in the dialect of 
Aramaic which Jesus used, Barnasha was too 
indefinite an expression to convey the meaning, 
which the Greek evangelists intend, there was, 
according to Lietzmann himself, at least one 
other word, Gadhra’, occurring no less than ten 
times in the document, in which Lietzmann finds 


1 The document is known as the Evangeliarium Hierosoly- 
mitanum (Z.e., The Jerusalem Lectionary of the Gospels, used 
presumably in public worship by the Christians of Jerusalem). 
Lietzmann informs us that this document “speaks specially the 
Galilzan dialect” of Aramaic (of. czt., p. 32), and that in it xyn3 
(darnash@) is, except in ten passages (all but one in the Gospel 
of Matthew), the standing equivalent for 6 dv@pwmos of the Greek 
Gospels. In most of the ten passages there is no special need for 
the definite article, but of at least one of them—Matt. xxvi. 72, 
Peters “I know not ¢he man”—this cannot be said. Would 
Lietzmann say that in this instance Galilean Aramaic could have 
said darnasha’ instead of gabhra’? The ten passages are: Matt. 
XViii. 12, 23, xix. 5, IO, xx. I, xxii. 2, xxv. 14, 24, xxvi. 72; Luke vi. 
Io. It seems to me that, if Lietzmann allows that darnasha@’ could 
have been used at Matt. xxvi. 72, he goes a long way towards 
surrender of his case. Professor Schmidt, speaking of the usage 
in the Evangeliarium Hierosolymitanum, remarks that gabhra@’ is 
used in the sense of husband in Matt. xix. 5, 10, adding that it 
occurs “also in Matt. xxvi. 72 as a synonym for darnasha’” (Encyc. 
Bibl. p. 4707). See, however, Appendix C, It. 





‘ 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” iss 


some of his principal illustrations of the dialect 
Jesus is supposed to have used, to which the 
same objection may, possibly, not apply. It is 
worth noting that the Hebrew equivalent of this 
word occurs in Job xvi. 21* as rhythmical parallel 
to ben ’adhim (=son of man). 

3. But I come to what I venture to consider, in 
this reference, the decisive point. It is allowed, 
on all hands, that the passage Daniel vii. 13 is, so 
to speak, the starting-point of the titular use of the 
phrase “‘ Son of Man” that appears in our Gospels. 
That is to say, the expression is fundamentally a 
quotation. Let us suppose that Jesus thought 
of the text in Daniel, and came consciously so 
near it as to use the phrase Barnasha@ (cp. - 
kbhar énaish, Dan. vii. 13); and let us go so far 
with the negative philologists as to suppose that, 
according to the usage of Aramaic in His day, the 
expression would not convey to anyone, who did 
not think of the passage in Daniel, either that 
Jesus was speaking of the Messiah, or referring to 


Himself, or indicating any one man in particular,— 


1 Unless, as Driver thinks probable (“‘ Daniel,” Cambridge Bible, 
p- 103, n. 2), we are to read here oy j3), z.e., “and defween a man,” 
etc. 





156 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


it may still be the case that, in rendering the ex- 
pression by o &. r. a., the Greek evangelists were true 
both to the meaning of Jesus and to the standard 
of linguistic propriety that is applicable to the 
case. For, clearly, it lies in the situation, that, as 
regards the phrase Barnasha’, the standard is not 
what might properly be said in the language, as it 
was in Jesus’ day, but rather what might properly 
be said in the language of the Book of Daniel. 
For my part, being in the hands of the Doctz, 
I am disposed to admit at least the probability 
that, apart from a reference to the passage in 
Daniel, the expression Barnash@ could not bear 
the very definite meaning intended in ov.7. a, For, 
though none of the passages, which scholars like 
Lietzmann and Fiebig are able to cite, are earlier 
than, say, the middle of the second century a.p., 
it is obvious that the process whereby both the 
patronymic prefix dav and the emphatic suffix @ 
came to lose distinctive force was not accom- 
plished in a day or a year. The undoubted usage 
of the second century a.D. is strong evidence for 
the Zrobadle usage of the first century A.D. But, 
on the other hand, it is weak evidence for the 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 157 


probable usage of the second century 3.c.—the 
time of the Book of Daniel. I am glad to be 
able to quote so high an authority as Dalman for 
the assertion that the usage of biblical Aramaic, 
as seen in the Book of Daniel, in regard to the 
expressions man and son of man, is essentially 
the same with the usage of biblical Hebrew. In 
particular (according to Dalman), the Aramaic 
bar 'énash@ is precisely on the footing of the 
Hebrew dex ‘adhaim. In both dialects the plural 
“sons of men” (Heb. dex ha ’adhim), in the 
sense of men generally (the bearers of human 
nature), is of frequent occurrence ;* but, apart from 
the special case of the Book of Ezekiel, where 
ben ‘adhim is the regular appellation of the 
prophet, the use of the singular is rare except 
in poetry, and it rarely stands by itself. It occurs 
as parallel to the synonymous maz. Thus, ‘What 
is man that Thou art mindful of him, or the son 
of man that Thou visitest him?” (‘édsh, parallel 

1£.g., Genesis xi. 5, and frequently. For a Greek equivalent of 
this usage, cp. Mark iii. 28. Wellhausen suggests that this latter 
verse contains the original saying of which Matthew xii. 32 


(“against the Son of Man”) is a gloss due to misunderstanding 
of the Aramaic. (Art. in Skzzzen u. Vorard., already referred to.) 





158 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


ben ’adhim), Ps. viii. 4; or, “God is not a man 
(sk) that He should lie, or a son of man (dex 
‘adhaim) that He should repent,” Num. xxiii. 19. 
Everyone sees that “ man” and “son of man” 
in such passages are synonymous. There is a 
reduplication of one idea, and yet most people 
will feel that the reduplication is more than a 
poetic form. Ifa Hebrew said of any individual 
in a half-poetical strain, “He is a man, yea, and 
a son of man,” what he would intend to express 
would be that the individual in question possessed 
in a marked degree the characteristic of humanity, 
of which the speaker was thinking at the time. 
What the characteristic was would of course de- 
pend upon the context. If the context indicated, 
as in the 8th Psalm, a contrast between man and 
God, the characteristic of man would be weakness, 
insignificance, perishableness. But if the context 
pointed, as in Daniel vii. 13, to the contrast be- 
tween man and wild beast, the characteristics 
of the individual, of whom max or son of man 
was predicated, would be such as gentleness, 
amenableness to the law of the right, humility, 
mercy. Now, it seems certainly to be the case 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 159 


that, in later Aramaic, the prefix, denoting soz, 
lost all force. Barnash or —@ was written as one 
word. It occurred constantly in prose. It was 
the word—in actual usage almost the only word— 
employed to express the indefinite @ man, or any 
one (Gr. ts). It had not of itself power to 
suggest, like the Hebrew dex ‘adhaim in, say, 
the appellation of Ezekiel, an emphasis upon 
human characteristics. 

Had this process of attenuation fairly com- 
menced, or was it even accomplished by the time 
of the Book of Daniel? Was Barnash even then 
no more than the Greek ws? If I understand 
him aright, Dalman says zo. The Book of 
Daniel was, he holds, written originally entirely 
in Hebrew,’ and just as at vil. 4 the Hebrew 
would say W382 (£e ’énosh) where the Aramaic says 
wana (he ’éndash), so at vii. 13 the Hebrew would 


say 01N71323 (£bhen-adhaim) where the Aramaic 
says 38 123 (kbhar ’énash). That is to say, both 
in Hebrew and in biblical Aramaic ‘“‘son of man” 
is poetical, but all the same it emphasises human 


characteristics. 


1 See above, p. 67, note 2. 





160 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


Fiebig, on the other hand, gives a partially 
affirmative answer to our question. He argues 
that the £e’énash of Daniel vii. 4, and the kéhar 
‘énash of Daniel vii. 13, prove that in the prose 
usage of Aramaic, in the time of the Book of 
Daniel, these expressions were exactly synony- 
mous and interchangeable. But this is not to 
be understood as a concession to Wellhausen. 
On the contrary he argues that, if biblical Ara- 
maic could say indifferently ’éxash and bar ’énash 
for @ man (with emphasis upon the human char- 
acteristics), the likelihood is that it could also say 
indifferently ’éxa@sha and bar’énasha@ for the man, 

It would be hazardous for a layman to attempt 
to umpire between two such authorities, and for- 
tunately it is not necessary. It is not a matter 
of any importance whether 6 dv@pwrros or 0 vies Tov 
av@pérov is the more exact rendering of the ex- 
pression Jesusused. There is, perhaps, an element 
of unverifiable conjecture in both sets of assertion. 
On the one side, we may ask Dalman whether, 
apart from the special instance of the appellation 
of Ezekiel, he can quote a single case in biblical 


” 


Hebrew where “son of man” is used alone— 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 161 


apart from its parallel “man” or its equivalent.’ 
And, on the other hand, we may grant to Fiebig 
the likelihood that in the prose Aramaic of the 
time of the Book of Daniel the expressions ’éxash 
and dar ’énash were synonymous and interchange- 
able, and still ask him whether this was altogether 
the case in writings of an exceptionally solemn 
and prophetic character. 

Is it not likely that the longer patronymic 
form had, to the first readers of Daniel, just what 
it has to us English readers of to-day, a power, 
somewhat superior to that of the single word, 
man, of emphasising the human characteristics ? 
Is it altogether far-fetched to point out that 
at verse 4 of Daniel vii. the human features 

1 In Ps. cxlvi. 3 the parallel to 03972 (son of man) is 0°23 (nobles). 
In his note on Daniel vii. 13 (Cambridge Bible, p. 102 f.), Driver 
gives fourteen examples from the Old Testament of the usage of 
Hebrew in reference to 077732 (or wi3y7]3, Ps. cxliv. 3) in the singular. 
In not one of the fourteen does the patronymic form stand alone, 
z.e., without a parallel word. This circumstance gives, it must be 
allowed, a certain impressiveness to the unique usage of “son of 
man” in Ezekiel, where it occurs over ninety times as the appellation 
of the prophet. There is no clear reference to Ezekiel in “son of 
man” in the Gospels, yet we may perhaps go so far with Weizsacker 
as to say that the usage in Ezekiel could hardly be absent from the 


mind of Jesus. 
11 





162 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


of the lion that had eagle’s wings are, in the 
nature of the case, external, and therefore com- 
paratively unreal? The essential feature in the 
first four symbols is not man, but deast. But at 
verse 13 the one and essential feature is humanity. 
Whether or not we can agree with such high 
authorities as Hilgenfeld? and Riehm? in saying 
that the ‘‘one like unto a son of man” who rides 
on the clouds is to the author of Daniel a real 
individual, ze, the Messiah, and not merely a 
symbol of the final Kingdom, it cannot escape us 
that symbol and reality tend naturally to coincide 
in the mind of the writer; and, for a reader who 
came to this passage with the expectation of an 
individual Messiah—the Jewish exegesis of the 
passage, as seen insome of the later Apocalypses * 
and in the words of our Lord Himself, proves it 
—the coincidence was inevitable. 

In any case, whether or not we think that the 
writer means, at this point, to conduct his readers 

1 Of. cit. 


2 Messianic Prophecy. TY. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1900. See 


long note, p. 193 ff. 
3 Especially Enoch and Fourth Ezra. See Enoch xlvi. 1, xlviii. 
2 ff., Ixii. 5, 7, Ixix. 27, 29, and Fourth Ezra xiii. 1 ff., xii. 32 ff 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 163 


out of the realm of symbolism to the conception of 
an individual glorious Man, who is the head of the 
final Kingdom given to the saints, it is clear that 
the distinguishing and all-comprehensive feature 
of the final Kingdom is humanzty. The writer 
means his symbol, if it is only a symbol, to 
convey that the glory of the final Kingdom is 
the glory of humanity—humanity in touch with 
God and harmonised with itself and all the world 
through obedience to His law. Is it straining 
matters to suppose that the writer, as it were, 
lingered over his description of the final Figure? 
While the other figures had in their size and 
fierceness the semblance of power but not the 
reality, ¢zs one, so far as he himself was con- 
cerned, though he had all the reality had none 
of the semblance. He was in essence and origin 
only a man, yea a son of man. 

The point, then, that I am disposed to emphasise 
in connection with this philological discussion is, 
that while laymen, like most of us, are bound to 
defer to the authority of specialists, so far as to” 
accept their verdict on the meaning or force of 


an expression in the ordinary usage of a language, 





164 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


we must allow place to considerations other than 
strictly philological, when we are dealing with 
the language of a great author like the writer 
of Daniel, or, let it be said with reverence, with 
the language of a great Personality like that of 
our Lord. We must remember that the thoughts 
of such persons — the remark applies of course 
pre-eminently to our Lord—move with freedom, 
not simply among the average conceptions of 
their own time, but also in the great conceptions 
and to some extent also in the language of the 
past. They are not slaves of the past, nor are 
they mere scholars. Their language is simple 
and clear, but there is often more in it than the 
average man is likely to comprehend. The 
something more is the suggestion and trans- 
formation of the past. They are scribes “in- 
structed unto the Kingdom,” and they bring 
forth from their treasure an original blending of 
things “new and old” (Matt. xiii. 52). 

A word, before passing from this question, on 
the support that is claimed for the negative 
verdict in the silence of the rest of the New 
Testament in regard to this title. If Jesus really 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 165 


used the title, and used it so constantly as the 
Gospels represent, why is there no certain trace 
of it in the Apostolic Epistles? Why does no 
apostle refer frankly to Jesus as the ‘Son of 
Man,” adding, for the convenience of readers, the 
explanatory parenthesis: As we know our Lord 
called Himself. 

The absence of such a reference in the shorter 
writings hardly raises any question, but is it 
not surprising in the comparatively voluminous 
Paul? Lietzmann and Wellhausen say: Paul 
was not aware that Jesus used any such title. 
The explanation is certainly simple and sufficient. 
But is it true? 

The silence of the Epistles is certainly at first 
sight surprising ; and the surprise would be dis- 
concerting, were not its spell broken by the 
reflection that the silence of the Evangelists 
themselves is not less remarkable. No Evan- 
gelist, speaking of Jesus, refers even once to 
Him as ‘‘the Son of Man.” It is hardly possible 
that this entire absence from other lips of a title, 
which, unless the Gospels entirely mislead, was 


continually on the lips of Jesus, can be accidental. 





166 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


It has been suggested in regard to the 
Evangelists, that they wish by their silence 
to give its due of impressiveness to the fact 
that the title is original to Jesus. It is His 
own form of self-designation. It contains, if 
we could only understand it, the secret of 
His peculiar self-consciousness. It is, in lan- 
guage used as early as 1838 by H. Weisse,* 
“ein ungestempelter Begriff’? =‘an unstamped 
conception,” which can bear inscription only from 
one hand. It represents, to quote the same 
authority, a new and “second power of human- 
ity,” realised only by Jesus. As regards the 
Apostles, it has been suggested that their silence 
is due to dogmatic reasons. Jesus is to them 
the Son of God, revealed in power through His 
resurrection from the dead. He is to Paul the 
glorious Figure met on the road to Damascus. 

These explanations are certainly suggestive 
and finely conceived; but perhaps it may be 
found, particularly in reference to the former, 
that something less will do. It may be sufficient 


1 Die evangelische Geschichte, 1838, vol. i. p. 319 ff. (reference 
given by Lietzmann). 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 167 


to say, with Dalman,* that o vids rod dv@parov does 
not occur oftener than is necessary in the New 
Testament, for the simple reason that the New 
Testament is written in Greek. The phrase 
Barnish#, applied distinctively to Jesus, might 
have, to Jewish-Christian ears, a certain appro- 
priateness, for its growth in that distinctive sense 
was easily traceable; and even where, through 
ignorance, the steps were not traced, the percep- 
tion of the meaning would be quick and almost 
intuitive. No doubt, the stages of the growth 
could be made apparent in Greek also, but the 
phrase could hardly have in that language the 
same naturalness. A preacher to an audience 
mainly Gentile could hardly have used it without 
the awkwardness of an explanation, and one, so 
cosmopolitan and practical as the Apostle Paul, 
might well have hesitated to cumber his sermons 
or his writings with a phrase, whose natural 
meaning to Greek ears would be that the person 
referred to was the son of some particular man. 
This reason of abstinence would gather strength 
the more the Church progressed in time and space 
1 Op. cit. 


a 





168 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


away from the primitive Jewish community. If 
this explanation seems to us to hit the fact, we 
shall know what to make of the suggestion that 
‘“Son of Man” in the Gospels is practically the 
invention of Gentile believers and writers. 

As regards the alleged ignorance, on the part 
of the writers of the Epistles, of any Messianic 
significance in the phrase ‘‘Son of Man,” it may 
be pointed out that, at best, the allegation can 
have only the precarious worth of an argument 
from silence; and that, as we have just seen, 
a silence that may be otherwise sufficiently 
explained. But, apart from this, I am inclined to 
agree with those who maintain that the assertion 
of ignorance is, as regards Paul and the writer 
to the Hebrews, directly falsified through their 
Messianic use of Psalm viii. 

The Psalm is cited at some length by the writer 
to the Hebrews (ii. 5 ff.), and is alluded to quite 
unmistakably? in 1 Cor. xv. 27 f. The peculiarity 
of both passages is, that a Messianic reference is 
assumed in the words that describe the glory, to 


1 Tf verse 25 is a reminiscence of Ps. cx. 14, verse 27 is still more 
certainly a reminiscence of Ps. viii. 64. Cp., also, Eph. i. 22. 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 169 


which, in spite of his apparent insignificance, man 
has been exalted by the Creator. It is not always 
easy for us to see what it is in a particular passage 
that has suggested a Messianic reference to a 
New Testament writer. Probably we sometimes 
do the writer a wrong when we suppose him to 
have a theory of some passage from which he 
cites a phrase. It is the isolated phrase, not 
the entire passage, that is to him Messianic in 
meaning, and therefore in Divine intention. But, 
in this case, the writer to the Hebrews quotes 
the Messianic passage in full. He has the whole 
passage clearly in view, and he deliberately 
assumes that it is Messianic. It seems to me 
we are bound to account for so extraordinary a 
judgment. What could have led this polished 
and logical writer to suppose that the Psalmist 
was thinking of anything more than the place 
of man in the scheme of creation? The answer 
is: the phrase “son of man.” Nothing could 
prevent the writer from seeing, just as clearly 
as we do, that the first reference of the passage 
is to man as such—the ordinary bearer of human 


nature. But then the Psalmist speaks not only 





170 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


of “men,” he refers also to ‘‘the Son of Man,” 
and He, we know (so argues the apostolic 
writer), was the Lord Jesus. In presence of ¢hzs 
reference, the inferior reference disappears from 
the writer’s mind. 

II]. To make up our minds that Jesus called 


Himself the “Son of Man,” meaning in His 


own mind that He was the Figure in Daniel's 
vision, to whom, on behalf of the saints, the final 
Kingdom was given, does not settle the question, 
whether He used the title so frequently as the 
Gospels represent. We have still to ask, Did 
He use the title from the first? Did He do 
it freely before disciples and multitude alike? 
Was He generally, or even partially, understood 
to be claiming the Messiahship? Did He use 
the title, as the Gospels represent, in connections 
that suggest the very reverse of the Messianic 
glory, pointing to a career of humiliation, suffering, 
and death ? 

This is a formidable array of difficult and 
closely inter-connected questions. It may be well 
to indicate what seems to me the right starting- 
point of an endeavour to answer them. 


{ 
4 
+‘ 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 171 


I consider it best to start from the general 
impression regarding this title “Son of Man,” 
which everyone who reads the Gospels, on the 
assumption that they are in the main true, carries 
away from them. This impression is, I think, 
two-fold—(1) Jesus had a striking way of re- 
ferring to Himself, in the third person, as the 
Son of Man. It impressed His hearers, and was 
meant to impress them. It was intended as a 
means of education, especially for His disciples. 
(2) The title was mysterious as well as suggestive. 
It meant more to Jesus than it could mean even 
to the disciples. The disciples did not complain 
of the mystery. It belonged to the situation. 
The mystery of the Master’s speech was part of 
the mystery of Himself. 

I start from this general impression, not be- 
cause I think it corresponds exactly with the 
facts. On the contrary, it is an impression which, 
as may appear by and by, needs to be very con- 
siderably modified. Yet I start from it, because 
I think it impossible that it can be entirely 
misleading. The spirit of the Master is in the 
records of the disciples. These surprise, they 





172 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


awaken reflection, they carry beyond depth, but 
they do not mislead. Let it be observed that 
it is no part of this first general impression that, 
in calling Himself Sox of Man, Jesus was wso 
facto proclaiming Himself to be the Messiah. 
This arises partly from the fact, that we are ex- 
pressly told that Jesus did not announce Himself 
to be the Messiah at all till near the close of His 
ministry. He did not announce it even to the 
disciples. He drew it from the depths of their 
own consciousness before the last months. It 
arises also from the fact that, not even to this 
day, is the mind of the general reader familiar 
with the equation: The “Son of Man” =the 
“Messiah.” We are all familiar with the equa- 
tion: The “Son of David” =the ‘ Messiah.” 
We share this familiarity with tke multitude 
who heard Jesus in Galilee and Judea. But 
we share also with them ignorance of anything 
peculiarly Messianic in the phrase “Son of 
Man.” 

I agree, at least partly, with those who say 
that this phrase was not a current designation 
of the Messiah. It seems to me that all, who do 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 173 


not wish to part company with the Evangelists, 
must be of this opinion. All the Synoptists 
agree that Jesus did not directly mention His 
Messiahship to the disciples till the scene at 
Czsarea Philippi, and that then He charged them 
to tell no man that He was “the Christ.” On 
the other hand, they represent Jesus as calling 
Himself “Son of Man” practically at all times 
and to all ears. I can see no reason to doubt 
that both these representations correspond with 
the facts; and I infer from them that, where 
Jesus used the phrase, it was by no means 
inevitable for the average man to suppose that 
He meant thereby to proclaim Himself the 
Messiah. 

Some years ago, almost simultaneously with 
the publication of Lietzmann’s book, I committed 
myself in print to the opinion that, while the 
general populace did not associate Messiahship 
with the phrase ‘Son of Man,” the same could 
prebably not be said of the learned class, re- 
presented in the Gospels by the Scribes and 
Pharisees. I also hazarded the opinion that the 
view of Dr. Charles, according to which the Book 





174 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


of Similitudes* in the cycle of Apocalypses bear- 
ing the name of Fxoch, including the passages 
where the Messiah appears with the title “Son 
of Man,” is of pre-Christian origin, is prob- 
ably correct. I cannot say that I have learnt 
anything from the philological discussion that 
has happened in the interval, that inclines me to 
depart from these opinions. But I do not con- 
sider that a judgment in the one way or the other, 
as to either of these matters, need affect our view 
of the motive or effect of Jesus’ use of the title. 
It is wholly probable that the habit of identifying 
the Figure of Daniel’s vision with the Messiah- 
to-come, and of referring to Him in some abbre- 
viated phrase like “the or that Son of Man,” ? 


1 So the section of Zzoch including chapters xxxvi.—Ixx. is usually 
called. For a brief account of the post-canonical Jewish Messianic 
literature, see the closing chapter of my Z7zmes of Christ (T. & T. 
Clark)—especially the footnote, p. 140ff., summarising the argu- 
ment against the theory that the “Son of Man” passages in the 
Book of Similitudes are due to Christian interpolation. An ex- 
haustive list of modern books, and editions of Jewish documents, 
bearing specially on the Messianic Hope, will be found in the 
second English edition of Riehm’s Messianic Prophecy (T. & T. 
Clark, 1900). See especially, in the last-named work, Appendix F. 

2 Those, who wish to investigate this point, would do well to 
consult two articles of Prof. Schmiedel, of Ziirich, 27 ve “Son of 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 175 


had by the time of our Lord long been formed 
among Jewish scholars. But the philological dis- 
cussion, as conducted especially by Fiebig, seems 
to me to bring out pretty clearly the result that 
the mere phrase Garnash@ would not, in many 
of the connections in which it may have been 
used by Jesus, and in some of those in which it 
is actually attested to have been used, even to 
scholarly ears at all necessarily, or even naturally, 


suggest a literary reference to the Book of 


Man,” in the Protestantische Monatshefte for July and August, 
1898. Schmiedel suggests that the variation between the de- 
monstratives zie and ¢haf, as applied to the Figure called “Son 
of Man” in the Book of Similitudes, may indicate that this book 
was written at a time when the practice of referring to the Figure 
in Dan. vii. 13, by means of the brief formula, “The Son of Man,” 
had hardly become a habit. The fact that Lwoch, written 
doubtless originally in Aramaic, is extant, chiefly, in an Ethiopic 
Version, makes it difficult to reach precise knowledge on the 
point. The latter of Schmiedel’s two articles has a certain historic 
interest, in the fact that it was written chiefly to combat the view 
Wellhausen had expressed, in the second edition of his /svael. u. 
Sid. Gesch., to the effect that Jesus had called Himself Zhe Man 
in the sense that “‘ He thought nothing human foreign to Himself.” 
Even in the second edition Wellhausen denied that the title had 
anything to do with Jewish Messianism ; but Schmiedel wrote his 
article in ignorance of the fact that, in the third edition of his 
Gesch., Wellhausen had departed even from the humanistic view 
of “Son of Man” and gone over to the negations of Lietzmann. 





176 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


Daniel, or any claim on the part of the speaker 
to be the Messiah. 

From an exhaustive study and citation of 
relevant passages, in all the available Aramaic 
documents, Fiebig shows that, in the ordinary 
usage of Aramaic, since at least as early as the 
second century a.D., the phrases Barnash and the 
determinate Barnasha were practically on the 
same footing. Each might mean indifferently, 
according to the context, a man, the man, men 
generally, some one, any one. If this result is 
sound, and if, as all the Aramaic scholars seem 
to agree, the equivalent of 6 viss rod dvOparov 
must have been Barnash@ (or, conceivably, just 
Barniash), a very suggestive light is thrown upon 
the phenomena of our Gospels. I have said that 
even the average English reader gets the impres- 
sion of something ambiguous and half-hidden as 
well as instructively suggestive in the title ‘Son 
of Man,” and that an impression so general and 
natural can hardly be misleading. Did not Jesus 
really wish to educate all susceptible souls in 
the appreciation of His person and aims? He 
Himself regarded the Messiahship, at least in the 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 177 


broad lines in which it seemed to be depicted in 
the Psalms and Prophets, as the Divinely given 
interpreter of His office, career, and destiny. 
He was the Messiah—the Prophet, the King, even 
the Priest who was to come. But the Gospels 
clearly attest that He was unwilling to declare 
Himself as the Christ. The necessity for reticence 
lay in the situation. He did not wish to encourage 
false hopes, but He did wish to educate all who 
might be responsive in true ones. If the Gospels 
are veracious, there must have been a time, when 
He sought for some descriptive phrase, which 
had not, in itself for ordinary ears, any Messianic 
associations, but which yet might be large enough 
to reflect the total Messianic idea in the counsel 
and word of God. If the Gospels are veracious, 
He found that phrase in the equivalent in His 
own language for ‘Son of Man.” If the Aramaic 
scholars are right, where they speak with one 
voice, that equivalent was Garnasha@. 

I think we may ask, with some confidence of 
having got hold of this perplexing matter by the 
right end, Could He have chosen any word that 


more exactly suited the situation ? 
12 





178 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


In particular, at present, we may notice that 
the phrase exactly suits the necessity of not 
declaring His Messiahship, and yet of contain- 
ing points of contact with Scriptural words and 
ideas. Suppose we experiment for a little with 
this key in the actual locks of some Gospel 
passages. 

Wellhausen and Lietzmann hold that the sup- 
posed habit of Jesus of speaking of Himself as the 
Son of Man is partly due to a misunderstanding 
of the Greek translators of Jesus’ words. In con- 
firmation of their views, they appeal particularly 
to two passages, both of which are certainly well 
adapted to their purpose. The one is Mark ii. 
27f. Suppose that Jesus said, ‘“‘ The Sabbath 
was made for darnash, therefore darnash is lord 
of the Sabbath,” not only a regard for language 
but a regard for logic would require us to 
translate, ‘“‘“The Sabbath was made for man, 
therefore man is lord of the Sabbath.” The 
reason that led our Evangelists to change man 
in the second clause to Sox of Man would be 
obvious enough. Was it credible that Jesus 
could have used words capable of meaning that 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 179 


any man had the right to set aside the Sabbath 
law? 

The other passage is Mark ii. 1 ff, and the 
parallel in Matthew ix. 2 ff. Was it not clearly 
the purpose of Jesus to show the Pharisees, who 
had asked, Who can forgive sins but God only? 
that, in certain circumstances (not specified), even 
a man on earth could do the same? Evidently 
the multitude, according to Matthew, understood 
His words in this way: “ They were afraid, and 
glorified God, which had given such power 
unto men” (Matt. ix. 8). It so happens that 
in Mark’s Gospel, which, on our hypothesis, is, 
generally speaking, more strictly chronological 
than the other two, these two passages are the 
only ones in which “Son of Man” occurs before 
the record of the scene at Czsarea Philippi. 

Anyone who holds so strongly as does, ¢.g., 
Baldensperger,’ that “Son of Man” was in the 


1 Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu im Lichte der messianischen 
Hoffnungen seiner Zeit. 2nd ed., Strassburg (Heitz u. Miindel), 
1892. The first volume of a wholly revised and greatly enlarged 
edition of this important work appeared this year (1903). Since 
this Lecture was written, I have had the opportunity of observing 
that, at p. 143 (footnote), the author modifies his formerly expressed 





180 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


time of our Lord a current designation of the 
Messiah, is in regard to these passages shut up 
to two alternatives. Either they are due to 
misunderstanding arising in the very plausible 
way just explained, or the incidents narrated are 
chronologically misplaced. Jesus could not, be- 
fore the scene at Czsarea Philippi, have used 
words, even in the hearing of the disciples,—let 
alone a general audience including, according to 
Luke, Pharisees and Scribes “out of every village 
of Galilee and Judzea and Jerusalem ” (Luke v. 17), 
—tantamount to a declaration of His Messiah- 
ship. 

It may be allowed that neither of these 
alternatives is “violent.” On the one hand, it 
was characteristic of Jesus to say paradoxical 
things, and, on the other, no modern scholar pins 
his faith to any particular view of the order of 
events in the ministry of Jesus. If these were 


opinion as to the currency of “Son of Man” as a Messianic title. 
He admits that the spontaneous use of the expression was confined 
to “the narrower apocalyptic circles,” and that, while the usage 
found its way into wider Jewish circles, it had there only a limited 
circulation, and, after the appropriation of the title by the Christians, 
no circulation at all. 


Noa et 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 181 


the only passages that could occasion difficulty 
to Baldensperger on the one side or Wellhausen 
on the other, I should be disposed to say that 
each of these critics had a real hold of the truth 
in this matter, though each approached it in his 
own way, and each was wrong in neglecting the 
view of the other. 

I should be quite willing to concede to 
Wellhausen that the primary thought in the 
one passage is that human need overrides all 
particular rules of Sabbath observance, and 
that the primary thought in the other passage 
is that the right to forgive is not possessed 
exclusively by God in heaven, but may in certain 
circumstances be exercised by a man on earth; 
and I should also concede to Baldensperger that 
in both cases there was in Jesus’ own mind a 
distinct reference to the Messianic Son of Man, 
and also that some suspicion of that reference 
was possible, or even probable, in the case of 
some of the Scribes. But it is obvious that the 
keys which these scholars bring to this problem, 
while they fit the locks of some passages, are 


quite useless in regard to others. What is 





182 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


Wellhausen to do with the passages where the 
meaning man (in general) does not fit the con- 
text, “Foxes have holes,” etc. (Matt. viii. 20), 
‘John came neither eating nor drinking,” ete. 
(xi. 19)? Wellhausen admits the personal re- 
ference in such passages, but does not seem to 
see how far the admission carries him in the 
direction of the position he rejects. On the other 
hand, what is Baldensperger to do with the fact 
that there is not the slightest hint in the Gospels 
that Jesus (until just the end) refrained from using 
the designation ‘‘Son of Man” in public? Rather 
they give, inevitably, the impression that Jesus 
used the title freely from the first and irrespective 
of His audience. 

For my own part, I am satisfied that this 
impression corresponds with the facts, so far as 
correspondence is possible. So far as corre- 
spondence ts possible—for, just owing to the fact 
that we have the words of Jesus in Greek, and 
not in His native Aramaic, a perfect corre- 
spondence is, in this particular case, peculiarly 
impossible. We may add that it is unnecessary 
and undesirable. I mean specially that, while 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN”. 183 


the Greek, 6 vids Tod dvOpérov, is entirely true to 
the mind of Jesus, whose thought was always 
directed to the Chosen One of God to whom 
the final Kingdom should be given (for whom, 
therefore, Barnaisha@ had the force suggested in 
our Gospels of a Divinely revealed title), it could 
not be true to the average understanding, or 
want of understanding, of the term, on the part 
of His audience. 

I learn from the Aramaic scholars, that 
Barnasha# (and, referring especially to Fiebig’s 
labours, and speaking as a mere layman, | 
confess that the evidence appears to me over- 
whelming) was an indefinite and ambiguous 
expression, not capable in itself of suggesting or 
conveying that the speaker referred to himself. 
There are, as we have seen, some passages where 
the personal reference in the understanding of 
the hearer was inevitable; and there are others, 
like “Barnash@ is Lord of the Sabbath,” where, 
while perhaps natural enough, it is by no means 


1 Whether uttered in connection with a transgression of the 
Sabbath conventions on the part of the disciples, or rather, as 
has been suggested, in connection with a similar transgression on 
Jesus’ own part. Cp. the parallel, Luke vi. 5. 


184 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


inevitable. Also there are sayings, especially 
those which refer clearly to the last time, where 
the understanding of a Messianic reference, at 
least on the part of the literary class among 
Jesus’ hearers, was, to say the least, possible; 
but there is perhaps only one saying—that in 
which, before the Sanhedrin, He quoted the 
actual words of Daniel vii. 13—in which such 
an understanding was inevitable. It has, more- 
over, to be remembered that many of the sayings 
are not apocalyptic, and contain no reference to 
the Messianic glory, or even to the final state in 
general. 

Take, eg., the saying already referred to, 
‘“Foxes have holes,” etc. Matthew tells us that 
Jesus said these words to a Scribe. He was 
perhaps one of those accessible Scribes, to 
another of whom Jesus said that he was not far 
from the Kingdom of Heaven. The Scribe could 
have no doubt that Jesus was speaking of Him- 
self. Also, he must have felt, in a remark- 
able degree, the attraction of Jesus’ personality. 
Accustomed to teach, he felt that no man ever 


taught like this man. Yet it is by no means 


Pay ae ee | 





THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 185 


certain, or even perhaps likely, that Jesus’ speak- 
ing of Himself in the third person, and saying 
Barnashi, \ed the Scribe to the idea that He was 
claiming to be the Messiah. 

Let me now refer to a class of passages in 
which, not the multitude or the learned class, but 
simply the disciples, are concerned, and in which 
the ambiguity of the expression Barnuash@ ap- 
pears in a somewhat different light. The time is 
just after the scene at Czsarea Philippi. The 
disciples know by this time, we may surely 
suppose, the difference between the Barnasha’, 
who may be anybody, and the 4arnasha’, who 
was only Jesus Himself. But they have not 
hitherto associated anything Messianic with this 
phrase. Now, for the first time, the intention 
of Jesus in His use of the phrase comes home 
to them. It is part of a conviction which Jesus 
Himself stamps as a Divine revelation, having 
first drawn it from their hearts that the Barnash@ 
of His constant speech is none other than the 
“one like unto a dar ’énash,’ whom Daniel saw 
coming with the clouds of heaven (Daniel vii. 13). 


For the moment their sense of discouragement 





186 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


vanishes. The King is about to take off the veil 
and appear in His glory. 

But just at this point He begins to utter 
with definiteness the prophecy of His shameful 
sufferings and death. Three times, with growing 
definiteness, He speaks of the betrayal, ignominy, 
and death of the “Son of Man.” As often, we 
read words to the effect that the sayings are to 
the disciples unintelligible. ow, suppose for 
a moment that Jesus had never spoken of 
Himself in the third person; suppose, ze, He 
had not adopted a style of speech, which had, 
as we might say, unconsciously educated the 
disciples in the idea that He was another person 
from what He seemed, even the Chosen One of 
God to whom belonged the Kingdom and the 
glory; suppose He had been to them only 
Jesus of Nazareth, a Prophet “ mighty in word 
and deed,” and also a beloved Master, taking 
them further along the lines of John the Baptist, 
but just speaking of Himself, like other prophets, 
as J or me; and suppose at this crisis He had 
said to them, “I have it from God that I am 
about to be betrayed into the hands of the 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 187 


Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate, and that ignominy 
and death await me which yet I shall survive,”— 
would it have been possible for us, in that case, 
to accept, as at all like the truth, the statement 
of the Evangelists that the saying was to the 
disciples unintelligible? What was there incon- 
ceivable in the idea that their Master would share 
the fate of many a prophet before Him and of 
John the Baptist in His own day ? 

Clearly, the amazing thing was, not that such an 
oracle should be given about a holy prophet and 
a beloved Master, but that it should be given 
about the glorious and heavenly “Son of Man.” 
For a moment, I venture to think, the question 
crossed their mind—the indefiniteness of the 
expression Barnasha@ made it the more possible : 
Does He mean that, after all, He is not the 
Messiah? Is this why He speaks in the third 
person—Himself one person, the Son of Man 
who is to come with the clouds another person ? 
They were tossed in amazement from one horn 
to the other of this dilemma—the glorious Son 
of Man suffering and dying, Jesus of that Son 
of Man. In such a state of the case it is 





188 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


certainly not putting it strongly, when one 
Evangelist says, ‘‘They w«nzderstood not the 
saying, and were afraid to ask Him” (Mark ix. 
32); and again, “They were amazed” (Mark 
x. 32); and another adds, “It was hid from 
them” (Luke ix. 45). 

Our view, then, is that the equivalent of ‘Son 
of Man” in our Gospels was an indefinite ex- 
pression, having in itself no power to convey 
either that the speaker referred to himself or that 
he meant the Messiah. When it was used in an 
obviously apocalyptic connection, as, ¢.g., in the 
saying about the Son of Man coming in the 
glory of His Father with the angels, it would 
inevitably suggest to the average Jewish hearer 
the Messianic Personage, 7.¢., one appointed by 
Jehovah to do His work of judgment in the earth 
and bring in the Kingdom, and would probably 
also suggest Daniel vil. 13. But it would by no 
means necessarily suggest that the person so 
speaking was himself claiming to be the Messiah. 
Apart from the private discourses of Jesus to the 
disciples after the catechising at Caesarea Philippi, 
there is, I believe, only one saying in the Gospels 


X 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 189 


where the three associations—that with Jesus Him- 
self, that with the Messiah, and that with the Son 
of Man in Daniel—would for the hearers of Jesus 
inevitably coincide. I mean the passage in which, 
in answer to Caiaphas, He acknowledged that He 
was ‘“‘the Christ,” and said, ‘‘ Ye shall see the Son 
of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and 
coming with the clouds of heaven.” 

If this is a correct view of the facts, it is clear 
that enquiry as to when Jesus degan to use the 
expression Soz of Man, or as to how oftex He 
used it, is superfluous. We have every right to 
take our stand on the natural supposition that He 
used it as freely, frequently, and habitually as the 
Gospels represent. 

III. There still remain to us, at least formally, 
the questions : 

A. Why did Jesus employ this objective mode 
of speech? 
B. What did He mean by “Son of Man”? 

A. The former question has two sides—the 
one relating to Jesus Himself, the other to the 
disciples. 

1..Why did Jesus speak of His Messiahship 





190 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


as if it were a thing outside of Himself? Why, 
e.g., did He not say simply Z or me in all cases 
where He wished His hearers to understand that 
He meant Himself, but did not wish or expect 
that they should understand Him to mean the 
Messiah ? 

The answer I venture to give is, that in 
a very real sense Jesus habitually placed His 
Messiahship outside the sphere of His ordinary 
human self-consciousness. If the fact of the 
Messiah in Jesus came as a revelation from the 
Father to His disciples, it does not seem to be 
saying anything more than is said in the story 
of His baptism to affirm that it was equally 
a revelation to Himself. It was a voice from 
heaven that said to Him—partly in the words of 
the 2nd Psalm—‘ Thou art My Son, the Beloved, 
in whom I am well pleased.” He had a vision 
of the Spirit of God descending upon Himself. 

His calling, therefore, did not proceed from 
a consciousness of powers born with Him and 
natural to His humanity. It came from a con- 
sciousness of special power lent to His human 
nature, and constituting, in the first instance, a 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” I9I 


temptation to it. In the crisis of the Temptation 
the power obtained the right place in His life, 
through the conviction that what came so directly 
from God was to be used only according to His 
specially revealed will. If it was true even of 
godly men in general that they ‘“‘lived” by every 
word that came from the mouth of God, it was 
singularly true of the chosen “Son of Man.” 
His Messiahship was, indeed, to Jesus the most 
real thing in the universe. It included all duty 
and destiny, but it was also a Divine mystery, a 
matter of faith. The details of it could not be 
anticipated. They must be learnt on the road 
of revelation. The Son of Man must go as it 
was written of Him in the word that spoke in the 
past, and spoke still. He must walk by faith, 
and learn obedience even through suffering. It 
would be easy to offend in the effort to report 
our Lord’s own sense of His calling, but it is 
surely not going beyond the most authoritative 
record we possess to say that He distinguished, 
to a certain degree, between Jesus of Nazareth 
and the Son of Man who was to come with the 
clouds. 





192 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


It could never be an ordinary thing, however 
habitual to His consciousness, that He was the 
Man to whom should be given the final and 
everlasting Kingdom. He, who should in His 
thought and faith habitually unite these opposites, 
must, in the first instance, as habitually do justice 
to their difference. Hence this fact in His life, 
and this witness in His biography, of the 
constant presence to His spirit of a will, a way, 
a destiny other than His own—something that 
was His and yet not His, because so purely and 
continuously a gift and revelation of God. Is it 
too subtle to suggest that the phrase He uses— 
“Son of Man,” taken in its Scriptural connections 
(especially Dan. vii. 13)—is peculiarly suited to ex- 
press both the union and the separation of these 
two things,—ordinary humanity and supernatural 
calling?* Jesus knows Himself to belong to 
humanity, yet to Him, even as Son of Man, 


1 I am disposed to agree with those, who find in the appellation 
“Son of man,” applied to Ezekiel, the expression of essentially the 
same paradox. The elevation is indefinitely lower and the range 
of vision indefinitely more contracted, but the central truth is the 
same. See especially Ezek. ii. 1 f., and the highly instructive sum- 
mary of the opinions of numerous learned men as to the meaning 
of “Son of Man” in Driver’s article in Hastings’ Dictionary. 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 193 


there is given a dignity and destiny more than 
human. 

2. We can hardly be wrong in supposing that 
part of the motive of the objective habit of speech, 
which we are considering, lay in the desire of 
Jesus to educate the disciples. If the Messiahship 
was something in reference to which He must 
Himself take the reverential attitude of a learner, 
it was surely in keeping with this that He real- 
ised the necessity of guarding His disciples against 
casual and insufficient ideas of it. 

I am disposed to trace to real reminiscence the 
impression we get from the Fourth Gospel, that 
those, who attached themselves to Jesus from the 
circle of John the Baptist, did so with the con- 
viction and confession that He was “ Son of God” 
and “ King of Israel.” These were undoubtedly 
popular and recognised titles of the Messiah, and 
were, on the lips of the people, of precisely the 
same import as the title “Son of David,” which, 
according to the Synoptists,* Jesus was at pains 
to reject for reasons which were confounding, if 
not convincing, to the Scribes. While He could 


1 Matt. xxii. 41 ff.; Mark xii. 35 ff.; Luke xx. 41 ff. 
13 





194 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


not expressly reject “ Son of God,” or even “ King 
of Israel,” it is, perhaps, a fair inference from the 
Synoptics that He did not encourage the disciples, 
any more than He did the demoniacs, in the use 
of even the former. The Messiahship was His 
own secret and His Father’s. His desire was to 
impart it to the disciples in the way that would 
obtain for it a worthy reception, or, at any rate, a 
secure lodging in their minds. The evidence of 
His reserve in regard to the use of popular titles 
is quite distinct in the Synoptic Gospels, and we 
may perhaps express the motive of it in terms 
borrowed from the Fourth Gospel. It was a 
special instance of His sanctifying Himself, that 
the disciples also might be sanctified in truth. 
The method implied in this reserve was success- 
ful. If we cannot say that the disciples received 
the truth of Jesus’ Messiahship “ worthily,” in the 
sense that it remained with them disentangled from 
all misconception, it is still certain that, when it 
came to them, it came to stay. It remained in 
spite of misconception and the offence of the 
Cross. 

B. Is it possible at this time of day, after 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 195 


much speech on the matter from many mighty 
men, to say anything that will really help us to 
understand what Jesus meant by calling Himself 
the “Son of Man”? There is a certain attractive 
capaciousness in the suggestion of an “unge- 
stempelter Begriff.” It may be inevitable, and 
therefore permissible, for those to whom Jesus 
Christ is to-day the ever-living power of God, to 
find in the title ““Son of Man” the expression of 
His total significance in history and individual 
experience. We may, perhaps, even say that the 
title was to Jesus Himself an ‘‘ungestempelter 
Begriff,” on which, in His earthly life, He was 
only beginning to stamp the impression of Him- 
self. On the other hand, such capaciousness has 
its dangers. There is apt to be room in it for 
everything but clear thought. We are bound, 
surely, to assume that, when Jesus chose to 
designate Himself by this title, it had to His own 
mind the edge of a definite interest and meaning. 
There was a thought that had a definite starting- 
point, and proceeded in a definite direction in 
a line of progress that may be assumed to be 


traceable. 





196 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


Let me close with a word—(1) On the starting- 
point ; (2) on the line of progress. 

1. Though great authorities can be quoted to 
the contrary, I venture to think it not open to 
serious: question that the starting-point was 
Daniel vii. 13, “1 saw in the night visions, and, 
behold, one like a son of man came in the 
clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of 
Days, and they brought him near before Him. 
And there was given him dominion, and glory, 
and a Kingdom, that all people, nations, and 
languages should serve him: his dominion is an 
everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, 
and his Kingdom that which shall not be 
destroyed.” In confessing His Messiahship be- 
fore the Sanhedrin, Jesus partially quoted these 
words ; and in more than a dozen other passages 
in the Gospels, where He speaks of the final 
judgment, or generally of the last things, the 
general reference to the Canonical Apocalypse is, 
perhaps, as unmistakable. 

Now, Daniel vii. 13f. is the only passage, 
which there is any evidence that Jesus had 
expressly in mind when He used the title 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 197 


“Son of Man.” We are not asking at present 
what Jesus may have put into the conception 
“Son of Man,” or even what He did actually 
put into it in process of time. We are asking 
only: What, for certain, did He put into it, and 
what did He start with? With all respect for 
investigators like Keim and Weizsiacker, it seems 
to me only a darkening of counsel to introduce, 
at this stage, any other reference than to the 
passage in Daniel, in its main suggestion and 
meaning. It is altogether likely that the 8th 
Psalm (Keim) and the appellation ‘Son of Man” 
given to Ezekiel (Weizsicker) frequently came 
to His mind. They would serve to link into one 
chain of Divine truth and purpose the passage in 
Daniel and the whole series of passages, par- 
ticularly in the Psalms and in Deutero-Isaiah, 
which emphasised the weakness of flesh and 
blood and spoke of the sufferings of the right- 
eous “Servant” of Jehovah, who was also His 
orl, 

Yet it is not the weakness of a mere “son 
of man,” but the transcendent glory and ever- 
lasting dominion of ¢e Son of Man of the last 


198 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


days, who reigns in the power of righteousness, 
that dominate the vision and thought of Jesus. 
His Messiahship is a hope, not a literal 
possession. It is a thing primarily of God's 
appointment for Him, and only secondarily and 
therefore of His own choice for Himself. There 
is not, even for Him, any glory in human weak- 
ness and suffering, as such. The glory lies in 
what is to follow. Only, what is to follow is 
just that which to His faith is most real. 

2. But, while the vision in Daniel supplied the 
starting-point and dominant factor of the thought 
of Jesus, it does not follow, and it is not the fact, 
that He was confined either to or by the letter 
of the representation in that book. It needs no 
very critical eye to see that the letter of Daniel 
and the letter of our Lord’s eschatological sayings 
in the Gospels do not coincide. Thus, in Daniel, 
the Son of Man does not exist at all, but only “one 
like unto @ son of man,” who does not appear to 
be a living individual, but only a symbolic repre- 
sentation of the “Saints of the Most High,” z., 
the law-abiding Jews, who receive the everlasting 
Kingdom when the kingdoms of brute force, with 





THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 199 


all their ‘‘abominations of desolation,” have passed 
away. 

It is not, indeed, necessary to suppose—there 
is to my mind strong evidence to the contrary 
—that the transformation of the symbol to a 
living person is, in the form of it, original to Jesus. 
It is probable that Jewish commentators had 
already found the individual Messiah in their 
Canonical Apocalypse. But, if we may judge from 
the Sox of Man passages in the Book of Similt- 
tudes and the analogous passage in Fourth Ezra 
(chap. xiii.), the Messianic Son of Man of the rab- 
binical conception was not more, but rather less, 
living than the symbolic Figure in Daniel. He 
may be dressed faultlessly in garments borrowed 
from Canonical Scriptures, but withal He is a 
mere lay figure with functions chiefly formal and 
passive. Jesus has the same fondness for the 
Old Testament, but with Him the garments of Old 
Testament phrase are chosen with discrimination. 
They are enlarged or contracted according to 
need, and fit a living person. He is entirely 
faithful to the great thoughts of Scripture, and 
even to their general form. ‘It is written” is 





200 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


always much to Him, but the mere letter of 
what is written does not trouble Him. 

One sees this both in what He adds to the 
representation in Daniel, and in what He sub- 
tracts from it. The vision of the Seer in Daniel 
seems to be that of a final Kingdom, in which law- 
abiding Jews exercise an eternal but righteous 
and merciful dominion over all other peoples. 
Jesus spoke, indeed, of the Jews as the children 
of the Kingdom, but He never taught that either 
membership or rule in it would be confined to 
them. The true heirs of the Kingdom might 
come from all quarters of heaven, and the children 
might be shut out. 

Again, in Daniel, the human Figure (in the 
interpretation the ‘Saints of the Most High”) 
simply receives the Kingdom. It is, perhaps, 
natural that in the dream-world of Apocalypse 
the human agents should appear mainly in an 
attitude of passivity. Both for Himself and His 
followers Jesus uses with sincerity the language 
to Himself. 
It is His Father’s good pleasure to “give” His 
little flock the Kingdom. But, even where it 


5] 


of passivity. All power is “ given’ 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 201 


would have been most natural for Him simply to 
quote verbatim the language of written Apocalypse, 
He rarely, if ever, does so. Thus the Son of 
Man in Daniel displays activity merely in coming 
with the clouds of heaven. He is a mere 
wonder. He is brought to the Ancient of Days, 
and is given dominion, and that is the end. The 
Son of Man, in Jesus, has the reality, not the mere 
semblance, of power. He has angels whom He 
sends forth from the four winds of heaven, to 
gather in the peoples to judgment. His own 
voice wakes the dead. He is Himself Advocate 
or else Accuser, before God, of the assembled 
multitudes; and, when the case is finished, the 
Accuser and Advocate becomes the Judge, and 
the Judge becomes the King.* 

One has only to read the 25th chapter of 
Matthew to see how far the thought of Jesus 


travels from the scenery of Jewish Apocalypse. 
The judgment, in Jesus’ teaching, is no mere 


1Cf. especially Matt. xiii. 41, xxiv. 30f., xxv. 31 ff., x. 32f. The 
conception of the Son of Man calling the dead to judgment 
appears formally only in John (see John v. 27 ff.), but it is entirely 
in line with the apocalyptic utterances in the Synoptics, and is 
modelled closely on Daniel xii. 2. 





202 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


gorgeous vindication of supreme but undefined 
rights vested in a chosen people; it is rather 
the emphasis of truths all men know. The 
Seer of the Gospels faces an audience, and 
searches the conscience of men and women He 
knows. The audience’ feels that, whoever the 
“Son of Man” may be, He will not judge 
otherwise than Jesus of Nazareth. By the 
distance that separates one, who is a mere 
wandering teacher, despised and disliked by the 
authorities, and with a mere handful of faithful 
followers, from One who rides upon the clouds 
and summons the nations to judgment, we may 
measure the originality of the Person who could 
not only think these two in one, but live upon 
the faith that they were by God's will one in 
Himself. , 

We may define the faith more closely. Jesus 
did not rest in a vague belief that a humble or 
earthly lot befitted the chosen Saviour of God's 
poor ones. He came to believe and to teach 
that the Messiah could save His people, only 
through the extreme suffering of rejection and 
death at the hands of His nation and the Gentiles. 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 203 


The ‘‘Son of Man,” therefore, in the mature mind 
of Jesus, is the Person who unites a career of 
utmost service and suffering with a sure prospect 
of transcendent glory. And herein we touch 
at once the depth and the height of His origin- 
ality. On the negative side of things nothing is 
more certain in our information regarding Jewish 
conceptions of the Messiah, in or near the time 
of our Lord, than that they did not include the 
idea that He should suffer vicariously for the sins 
of His people. It is no mere rhetoric to say that, 
from the apostolic period to the present day, the 
Cross has been to the Jews a stumbling-block. 
No doubt, in the early Christian centuries, one 
finds in Jewish circles—elicited probably by con- 
troversy with Christians—the idea of a dying 
Messiah, and even the idea of merit available for 
others in the righteous Sufferer. But a glance 
at the passages, where these ideas appear, shows 
the fallaciousness of the hope of finding in them 
points of contact with Christian doctrine. Thus 
in Fourth Ezra (circa 70 a.v.) the Messiah 
dies, but His death is only an incident in an 
eschatological programme, which assigned to 





204 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


the Messiah no other function than that of 
living for 400 years with the godly previous to 
a final judgment executed by Jehovah Himself. 

Again, the Zargum of Jonathan (fourth century 
A.D.), perhaps the most authoritative document of 
what may be called Patristic Judaism, admits a 
reference to the Messiah in Isaiah liii., but care- 
fully excludes from the scope of the reference what 
would be to Christians just the most relevant 
passages." 

But, apart from Jewish documents, our Synoptic 
Gospels alone offer the most satisfactory proof 
that, so far as even the best of His own con- 
temporaries were concerned, the idea that the 
Messianic Son of Man should give His life a 
ransom for many was absolutely original to Jesus, 
and His own secret, until He began, with so 


1 For the details, see especially Dalman’s brochure, Jesaja 53 
erortert, 2nded., 56 pp. Leipzig: Faber, 1891. The author deals 
throughout with the rabbinical exegesis. Seealso Dr. G. A. Smith’s 
“Tsaiah” in the Exfosztors Bible, vol. ii. p. 281, note—especially 
the reference to Bredenkamp. The latter quotes a Rabbi of 
the sixteenth century as saying, with reference to Isa. lili. : “ Our 
Masters have, with one voice, held as established, and handed 
down, that here it is ‘King Messiah,’ who is spoken of.” Cp., also, 
Webers /Jiidische Theologie, 2nd ed., § 63, p. 292 ff. Dérffling u. 
Franke, Leipzig, 1897. 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 205 


indifferent success, to make it plain at Czsarea 
Philippi. Those, who cling to the idea that the 
Fourth Gospel is as literally true to history as 
the Synoptics, have, in this reference, their own 
difficulties with the Johannine testimony—that two 
of His first disciples were introduced to Jesus 
as the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin 
of the world. For us it may be sufficient to 
say that this testimony must be interpreted? in 
harmony with the undoubted and indubitable 


1 There seems to be no good reason, why such an interpretation, 
as that suggested long ago by the late distinguished author of 
Ecce Homo, should not be accepted. John was looking for the 
Messiah. Among the crowds, who came to the baptism of repent- 
ance, was One unlike all the others—an Innocent One among the 
guilty. It is hardly conceivable that John should have failed to 
see anything unique in Jesus at their short but solemn meeting, 
or that he said nothing memorable about it to his own disciples. 
If he could describe zmsel/f from the pages of Deutero-Isaiah 
(Isa. xl. 3), why might he not also from the same source (Isa. liii. 7) 
record his impression of Jesus? It is surely credible that one, 
whom Jesus characterised as “more than a prophet,” should throw 
off a couple of phrases (“Lamb of God” and “bearing sins”) 
suggested by Scriptures, that were constantly in his mind, and 
that these phrases should suit the facts regarding Jesus’ Person 
and Office, in ways of which the speaker himself was not conscious. 
One may believe all this, however, and still hold that there is an 
idealising element, in the portrayal of the Baptist in the Gospel 
of John, that is absent from the Synoptics. See Mr. Morris 
Stewart’s Temptation of Jesus, p. 213 ff. Melrose, 1903. 





206 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


testimony of the Synoptists to the effect that 
the idea of the Messianic sufferings and death 
is one that wakes no echo in the heart of any 
Jewish contemporary of our Lord, not excepting 
even His disciples. 

Unless we regard the story of the Transfigura- 
tion as proof to the contrary, there is no hint in 
the Gospels that Jesus reached the conviction of 
the necessity and efficacy of His death by way of 
supernatural apocalypse. Yet we may be certain 
that, psychologically speaking, this truth came to 
Him not otherwise than the older truth that He 
was the Chosen and Beloved Son of God. His 
destiny to be the suffering Messiah was as much 
a mystery to Himself as His destiny to be the 
glorious Messiah of Daniel’s vision. And the 
proof may lie for us in the fact that, here also, 
He uses the objective mode of speech, and speaks 
of the Son of Man who goes as it is written. It 
was not mere thinking out of the matter that 
brought Him to this conclusion. His vicarious 
death was a Divine revelation—a thing apart in 
His consciousness quite as much as the voice 
which He alone heard at His baptism: Thou art 


THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 207 


My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. To 
say this is not to deny His originality. It is to 
assert it. The only originality that belonged to 
Him, or that He would have claimed, was the 
originality of an obedient faith in God—the 
unique Father of the unique Son. 

We may perhaps agree here that there is no 
originality, for any of us, worth having or using, 
_ other than an originality like—however also un- 
like—to that of the “Son of Man.” 





09) 
i 
ms n 
a) 
Za 
(x) 
Ay 
Ay 
a 








APPENDIX. A. 
LECTURE I. 


The passage, Luke 17%, at p. 29.—There is a 
question here, both of the “lower” and the “higher” 
criticism. 1. The question of the lower criticism con- 
cerns the meaning of the preposition, évtds. Does it 
mean w2zthzm in the sense of Ps. 39? (LXX, Ps. 383: 
’"EdcpyavOn 1) Kapdia ov évtos mov): “My heart was 
hot wzthin me.” Or, does it mean zm the midst of, év 
péow,' with a sense akin to that in Judg. 12°, where, eg., 
at ver. 32 the LXX read: kat xat@xnocev 0 “Aaonp év 
péow tov Xavavaiod. Grammatically, both meanings 
are possible (see Grimm’s Dzctzonary of N.T. Greek, at 
word évtds). Hence, on both sides, interpreters support 
the rendering they prefer by considerations drawn from 
the context, or from their general views of the doctrine 
of Jesus. Those who adopt the rendering “within 
you,” favoured by both the A.V. and the R.V., are 
naturally influenced by the idea that it is the quality of 
nwardness that distinguishes the Kingdom, as Jesus 
conceived it, from that of which the Pharisees thought. 
On the other hand, it is contended, withsome justice, 
that Jesus would hardly have said: “ The Kingdom of 
God is within you,” to the Pharisees. 

1 Cp. Luke 22”. 


2i1r 


212 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


2. Thus, on both sides, the question is passed on to 
the criticism that must bear heavier responsibilities than 
those that run on lines of grammar. I agree, on the 
whole, with those who translate “among you,” and it 
seems to me that at p. 86,n. 1, of his Dze Predigt Jesu, 
J. Weiss makes a point against Dalman, who supports 
the rendering, “ within you” (= zu cordibus vestris), in 
the contention, that, in an Aramaic original, the equiva- 
lent of évytés would be, on Dalman’s own showing, not 
132 (4g0), in, but ‘22 (benz), between or among. On the 
other hand, it may well be that the ambiguity attaching 
to the Greek work évtés is intentional. Jesus may 
have hesitated to say to the Pharisees : “ The Kingdom 
of God is wzthin you,’ and yet may have wished to use 
an expression that might some day penetrate even 
them with the idea that the Kingdom was spiritual, and 
must be discerned from wzthin. In any case, the 
cautious student should not too readily surrender this 
logion to interpreters, whose tendency is to make more 
of the apocalyptic element in the Gospels than the facts 
warrant. 

It is significant that J. Weiss, who cannot be accused 
of minimising this element, yet contends that Luke 
17” should be interpreted in the light of Matt. 12%, 
and the parallel, Luke 11, the meaning of which is 
plain. His interpretation of eta wapatnpycews in a 
subjective rather than an objective sense seems to me 
both relevant and suggestive. It gives the meaning: 
The Kingdom of God does not come, and will not come, 
in the manner expected by those, who wait for it with 
the eyes of the apocalyptic reckoner and visionary. 
Just as, at Mark 12% and parallels, Jesus repudiates 
connection with the political hopes associated with the 





APPENDIX B 213 


popular Messianic title, “Son of David,” so here, with 
equal emphasis, He disallows the attitude of those who 
dealt, on whatever Scriptural authority, in apocalyptic 
reckonings, looking for a sign from the physical heavens, 
but blind to the real signs of the times. Doubtless, 
there was an insincere element in the question of the 
Pharisees. The passage should be read along with 
Matt: ro, Mark 84%; Luke 1254, 


APPENDIX B. 
LECTURE II. 


Affinity between the Phraseology of Jesus and that 
of the Jewish Apocalypses, at p. 62.—The principal 
examples of parallelism between the eschatological 
discourse in Mark 13 (= Matt. 24) and passages in 
Jewish apocalypses, which Haupt cites in support of 
his contention that we are warranted in asserting no 
more than that our Lord used some phrases, that were 
more or less current in writings of the apocalyptic 
class and in popular language, are as follows (of. cit, 
p. 47ff.) :— 

1. Beginning of Sorrows, and Sign of the Son of Man. 
—Speaking of Fourth Ezra, he remarks: “ Matt. 24° 
recalls not only 4 Ezra 5°, popule commovebuntur, but 
also zbzd. 9°#-: Quando videbttur in seculo moto locorum, 
populorum turbatio, gentium cogitationes, ducum incon- 
stantia, principum turbatio ... sicut omne quod factum 
est in seculo initium habet, pariter et consummationem, et 
consummatio est manifesta, sic et Altissimt tempora: 
initia manifesta in prodigiis et virtutibus, et consum- 





214 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


matio in actu et in signis. Here we note, along with 
a number of kindred ideas, especially the difference 
between the dpyyn @divev and the final onpetoy of the 
Son of Man. The following words in Ezra 9 make 
the parallel even more striking: Et erit, omnis qui 
salvus factus fuerit et qui poterit effugere per opera sua 
vel per fidem, in qua credidit, ts relinquetur de predictis 
periculis et videbit salutare meum. The words, guz 
poterit effugere, recall Luke 21%, ‘that ye may be 
accounted worthy,’ etc., and the concluding words recall 
even more forcibly Matt. 243%, ‘he that shall endure,’ 
etc.” And yet, Haupt goes on to remark, we cannot, so 
far as the Gospels are concerned, entertain the idea of 
literary dependence. Not only is Fourth Ezra later 
than Mark, its date being about 90 A.D. (so Gunkel in 
Kautzsch’s Pseudepigraphen, vol. ii. p. 352); but in the 
fact that we find the same thought of the remnant, who 
escape all the prophesied dangers and see the salvation 
of the Lord, expressed with considerable similarity of 
phrase in Ezra 6%, we may see a proof that both the 
idea and the phrase were widely circulated in the 
apocalyptist’s time. Matt. 24° may, further, be com- 
pared with Baruch 708. I quote from Charles’s edition, 
Apocalypse of Baruch (A. & C. Black, 1896): “And it 
will come to pass that whosoever gets safe out of the 
war will die in the earthquake, and whosoever gets safe 
out of the earthquake will be burned by the fire, and 
whosoever gets safe out of the fire will be destroyed by 
famine.” Here the preliminary woes, except the five, are 
the same with those mentioned in Matthew. The date 
of Baruch, according to Kautzsch (of. czz., vol. il. p. 407), 
is after 70 and not later than 96 A.D. 

2. Betrayal and Hatred among Friends, Matt. 24” 


. APPENDIX B 215 


compared with 4 Ezra 6% and 5°: Evzt zm clo tempore 
debellabunt amict amicos ut inimici. Amici omnes semet 
ipsos expugnabunt. Compare also Baruch 70°: “ They 
will hate one another, and provoke one another to 
fight.” 

3. Abounding Iniquity, Matt. 24% compared with 
4 Ezra 5%: Multiplicabttur iniustitia super hanc quam 
tu vides et super quam audistz. Also, zbzd. 51°: Multz- 
plicabitur iniustitia et incontinentia super terram. And 
zbid. 7%: Quando intustitia multiplicata est. Compare 
also, in Charles’s translation, Enoch 917: “And then 
when unrighteousness . . . in all kinds will increase, a 
great chastisement from heaven will come upon them 
all.” Charles fixes the date of this section of Enoch at 
166-161 B.c. This would move it back more than 
two centuries from the time of 4 Ezra, and goes to 
confirm Haupt’s contention that the idea and the phrase 
might be in the minds and on the lips of Jesus and 
His disciples, quite apart from any knowledge of a 
written extra-canonical apocalypse. 

4. The Shortening of the Time of A ffiiction, Matt. 24”. 
—The Efzstle of Barnabas, a Christian document, which 
Lightfoot is disposed to date at 70-79 A.D. (Lightfoot— 
Harmer, The Apostolic Fathers, p. 241), refers at 4? to 
Enoch: “The last offence is at hand, concerning which 
the Scripture speaketh, as Enoch saith. For to this 
end, the Master (Sea7rdTns) hath cut the seasons and the 
days short (cuvrétunkev Tods Karpovs Kal Tas Hépas), that 
His beloved might hasten and come to His inheritance” 
(Lightfoot’s translation). Words closely like any of the 
above occur, so far as I am aware, nowhere in any 
known MS. of Enoch; but, according to Charles (The 
Book of Enoch, p. 38) the passage here referred to is 


Debs SN | 


216 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


Enoch 89°, The section of Enoch, in which this 
passage occurs, he dates at only a few years later than 
Daniel. There is the same representation of heathen 
oppressors under the symbol of wild beasts. They tear 
in pieces the sheep, z.e., the Jews, who for their sins are 
delivered to lions and tigers (Assyrians and Chaldees ?), 
etc., by the seventy “shepherds” or angels (so most 
interpreters) to whom they are entrusted. The writer 
wishes to convey that Jehovah will punish the “shep- 
herds” who have gone beyond His commands as to 
the number of sheep they have allowed to be destroyed. 
At ver. 60, after Enoch has wept and entreated for the 
sheep, Jehovah says to the shepherds, “I will deliver 
them over unto you duly numbered, and will tell you 
which of them are to be destroyed,—and these destroy 
ye.” The shepherds destroyed many more than were 
prescribed. But a scribe was set to watch them, and 
Enoch saw till the scribe’s record was laid before the 
Lord of the sheep, and the seventy shepherds were 
seized and found guilty, and a new house was miracu- 
lously provided for all the sheep that were left, and 
“all the beasts of the earth and the birds of heaven 
did homage to them” (Enoch go” 2"¢ 3°), 

Enoch, on the whole, is a book which no average 
man will read through gladly even once, and, as I have 
referred once or twice to my handbook, The Times of 
Christ (T. & T. Clark), I may take here the opportunity 
of saying that I am not so sure now as I was in 
1896 that this apocalyptic book had any interest for 
Jesus, or that it was even known toHim. Yet, anyone 
who wishes to study the mere ¢echnique of Jewish 
apocalypse will probably be helped rather than hin- 
dered by the exceeding tameness of the imagery, to 


APPENDIX B 217 


find most that he wants in such a book as Enoch, 
chaps. 83—90. 

To the head of the Shortened Time belongs the 
passage in Baruch 20%, where the words run: “ Behold, 
the days will come, and the times will hasten more 
than the former, and the seasons will speed on more 
than those that are past, and the years will pass more 
quickly than the present. Therefore have I now taken 
away Zion, that I may the more speedily visit the 
world in its season” (Charles’s translation). 

5. False Prophets and Deceptive Signs and Wonders, 
Matt. 24*4 compared with Baruch 48**: “ And there will 
be many rumours and tidings not a few, and the works 
of portents will be shown, and promises not a few will 
be recounted, and some of them will prove idle, and 
some of them will be confirmed ” (Charles’s translation). 

In regard to all these resemblances of idea and 
phrase between the Gospels and Jewish apocalypses, 
and in regard to others which he cites further on, Haupt 
admits that we cannot speak of mere coincidence; but 
the effort to build upon them the conclusion, that our 
Lord’s conception of the consummated kingdom was 
confined within the framework of the average pious 
expectation of His time, he characterises as a twofold 
error: (1) that of failing to recognise the independent 
attitude adopted by Jesus to the religious tradition 
of His fellow-countrymen ; and (2) that of overlooking 
the pervasively pictorial character of our Lord’s mode 
of speech (of. cit, p. 49). 

I have written the Lectures under the conviction 
that Haupt’s position, as so stated, is sound, though, as 
regards the theory of the Lzttle Apocalypse, touched in 
Lecture I., 1 am not prepared to go beyond the Scottish 


218 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


verdict of “Not proven.” A verdict the one way or 
the other, in the latter matter, does not touch our 
estimate of Him who is the Truth; it touches only our 
judgment regarding the literary method and spiritual 
perception of the Evangelists. They were surely men 
of their time, in a sense or degree not predicable of 
Jesus. 


APPENDIX © 
LECTURE TV. 


I. “ Son of Man” in the Synoptic Gospels,“ On about 
forty different occasions, etc.” p. 145. The following 
conspectus of the passages will be useful to the student. 
I have marked with the letters af. the passages that 
are clearly of the apocalyptic class, referring, ze., to the 
final glory of the Messiah. 


MATTHEW. 

870, Son of man lay his head. 19%, In the regeneration, when, af. 
9°. Power to forgive. 2018, We go up to Jerusalem. 
10%, Gone over cities until, a. 20°, Not to be ministered unto. 
111%, Eating and drinking. 247", As the lightning, so, af. 
128. Lord of the Sabbath. 24°°, Then!shall appear the sign, af. ; 
12°, A word against. twice. 

12”, Jonah three days. 2487 and 89. Noah, so shall also coming, 
13°”, He that soweth the good. ap. ; twice. 

13". Angels to gather tares. 2444, Think not cometh, af. 

1618, Who do men say. 2518, Watch, for know neither day, af. 


1627, Come in glory of Father, af. | 25°. When Son of man shall come, 


167, Some not taste death, af, ap. 

17°. Tell vision to no man, af. 267. After two days the Feast. 

172, Suffer like Elias (John the| 26™. Goeth, as it is written ; twice. 
Baptist). 26%, Sleep on now. 

17”. Betrayed into hands of men. 26°, Hereafter shall ye see, a. 

18, Come to save lost. 


Analysis of Matthew ; Thirty-two occurrences on twenty-nine occasions. 
Of the thirty-two, fourteen are apocalyptic; of the fourteen, eight are in 
chaps. 24 and 25. It is perhaps doubtful whether 17° and the parallel 
Mark 9? should be considered apocalyptic. 


i © 


APPENDIX C 219 


MARK. 
2), Power to forgive. 10%. We go up to Jerusalem. 
2°38, Lord of the Sabbath. 1o*, Not to be ministered unto. 
8°, Began to teach—Cczs. Phil. 13°. Then shall they see, a. 
8°85, Son of man be ashamed, af. 1471, Goeth, as it is written ; twice. 
9°. Tell no man till, af. 14%. Sleep on now. 


9". Written of, that must suffer. 14°, Before Caiaphas, af. 
9. He taught Hisdisciples and said. 


Analysis of Mark: Fourteen occurrences on thirteen occasions: all but 
three of the fourteen, namely 8%, 8°, 9%, clearly represented in Matt. 8° 
and 8%, are, however, represented by Luke 9” 27428, 


LUKE. 
574. Power to forgive. |17™. Days of the Son of man, af. 
6°. Lord of the Sabbath. | 17°. Lightning, af. 
7. Eating and drinking. | 174, Even thus in the day, a. 
977. Son of man must suffer. | 188. Find faith in the earth, af. 
9*. Son of man be ashamed, af. _| 18*4. We go up to Jerusalem. 
9. Let these sayings sink. | 19°. To seek and save. 
[9° Not to destroy—Westcott and 2177. Then shall they see, a. 
Hort and R.V. reject. ] 21°86, Stand before the Son of man, a. 
9°8, Foxes have holes. | 22%. Goeth as determined. 
11°, Sign of Jonah.: 22%. Betrayest thou with a kiss. 
128. Son of man confess, af. | 228°. Before Sanhedrin, a. 
12)°, Word against. ‘24. Reminder at the tomb. 


Analysis of Luke: Twenty-two occurrences on as many occasions: nine 
of the twenty-two apocalyptic. 


Final Analysis, Matthew, Mark, and Luke: Subtracting three from 
Matthew’s thirty-two, namely, the repetitions in 245929459 and 26%, 
reckoning Mark 9*! peculiar to Mark, and Luke 9%, 128, 17%, 188, 19!°, 
218, 22%, 247 peculiar to Luke, and adding to these Luke 97 294 26 as 
representing Mark 8*! 4248, we obtain exactly the number forty, mentioned 
in the beginning of Lecture IV. 


ABPEN DISC: 
LECTURE IV.—continued. 
Il.—Lzetzmann and the word Gabhra@ (under No. 2 


of the propositions contra the Lietzmann—Wellhausen 
position), p. 154.—-The statement under this head in 


220 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


Lecture IV. is hardly detailed enough to seem relevant. 
I have no expert knowledge of Aramaic, or its various 
dialects, whether considered geographically (Lietzmann), 
or historically (Dalman); but I have been at pains to 
study the dicta of the authorities, so far as they relate 
to the matter under discussion. Relying on informa- 
tion, supplied largely by themselves, I maintain with 
confidence that Wellhausen and Lietzmann have, of 
course without intention, misled the discussion re- 
garding “Son of Man” in the Gospels. Lietzmann 
has done so, especially in two ways :— 

1. He has gone beyond the warrant of the facts 
in speaking as if barnash@ and gabhr@ were absolutely 
synonymous expressions. No doubt, as they both 
mean, in general, man, they are used naturally and 
frequently as synonymous; but it does not follow 
that barnasha@ might have been used in every case, 
where we find gadhra. Thus in the Ev. Hieros., at 
Matt. 19°94! sabhra@’ is used in the sense of husband. 
Lietzmann will hardly maintain that it would have 
been natural in later Aramaic to say dbarna@sha@ for 
man as distinct from woman. If he said so, he would 
surely give away almost entirely his case against 
“Son of Man” in the Gospels, which depends mainly 
on the zzdefinzteness of the expression darnash@. On 
the other side, it is by no means clear that gabhr@ 


ever lent itself to the same degree of indefiniteness 


of meaning, that was possible (witness the Talmudic 
usage) in the case of barnash@. For instance, in a 
sentence beginning, “ If azyone—’, a Talmudic writer, 
unless he were actually commenting on a canonical 
Hebrew text, and, out of conventional reverence, using 
Hebrew, would express anyone by barnash, or even 


APPENDIX C 221 


barnasha ; but it would be, I venture to think, as 
unnatural for him to use gabhr@ as it would be for 
a Hebrew writer to use gebher instead of ’adham. 
For an example of this kind of sentence, see in 
Dalman (of. cit, p. 202, Germ. ed.) the famous in- 
stance of the Talmudic commentator on Num. 23%, 
who quotes R. Abbahu, a Jew of Cesarea, circa 
280 A.D., as saying (evidently in controversy with 
the Christians): “If anyone says, ‘I am God,’ he 
lies; ‘I am the Son of Man, he will finally regret it; 
‘I am going up to heaven,’ he has said it, but will 
not carry it out.” The commentator uses Hebrew, 
and says, “adham for anyone, and ben ’adham for 
the Son of Man. If Dalman’s view of the passage 
is correct, the latter expression contains a clear refer- 
ence to the Christian use of “Son of Man” as a title 
denoting the divinity of Jesus.? 


1 Schmidt, proposes to excise the words meaning He wll finally regret it, 
and to read after Ze “es: ‘‘I am a son of man (2.¢., a man), and I am 
going up to heaven.” This, certainly, suits the fact that R. Abbahu has 
made no attempt to paraphrase the titular ‘‘Son of Man” of the Greek 
Gospels. If he had intended a title, would he not have attempted some 
Hebrew equivalent of the Aramaic-Christian terminus technicus, breh dhe 
gabhr@ ox breh dhe bharnashd ? Even on Schmidt’s view, the reference 
to Jesus in this interesting Talmudic passage as the person who says he 
is ben °adham and is going up to heaven, is, as Schmidt admits, indubit- 
able (Excyc. Bibl., vol. iv. p. 4706). Schmidt supposes that R. Abbahu 
wishes to point satirically to the contrast between Jesus’ confession that 
He was only a den ’adham, and the enormous claim in John 14% and Acts 
1°. I observe that the late revered Professor Franz Delitzsch, who died 
before the philological discussion regarding ‘‘Son of Man” arose, has, in 
his Hebrew Version of the New Testament (Ackermann & Glaser, Leipzig, 
1880), rendered ‘‘ Son of Man” in the Gospels uniformly by de ha ’adham. 
If, as I believe to be the case, this expression (z.¢., the definite article with 
the singular, *a¢dham, after den) occurs nowhere in the O.T., it may be con- 
sidered sufficiently peculiar to serve the purpose of a Hebrew-Christian 
equivalent for the Aramaic-Christian fermznus technicus, breh dhe gabhra’. 


222 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


2. Lietzmann has gone beyond the facts in the 

emphasis he has laid on the zudefiniteness of barnasha. 
_ No doubt, as proved by the Syriac Versions of the 
Gospels (Cureton and Peshito) and by the Talmudic 
usage, barnasha may be indefinite enough; but it may 
also be fairly definite, if not emphatic. 1 have no 
access to the Ev. Hizeros., but I owe the reader of 
p. 154,n. 1, of this book an apology for not having 
learnt sooner from the exasperating small print of 
the Encyc. Bibl. (vol. iv. p. 4707) that barnash@ 1s 
used as the synonym of gadhrad in the instance 
noted. For, while at Matt. 267 the Av. Hzeros. uses 
gabhr@, where Peter says, “I know not the man,” at 
ver. 74, where the same words occur, darnasha@ is 
used. 

Furthermore, the Av. Hizeros. is singularly exact 
in distinguishing between darnash and the emphatic 
barnash@. Thus, in numerous passages, the former is 
used exclusively as the rendering of av@pwros (eg., 
Matt. 8°, 19°, Mark 8°), and darnadshd@ as exclusively 
for 6 avOpwros. There seems even, according to Prof. 
Schmidt, to be a distinction in this document between 
barnash and the simple ‘éa@sh, as in a series of 
passages, where both occur, the latter is used ex- 
clusively in the sense of anyone. 

Again: Prof. Schmidt points out the inaccuracy 
of Lietzmann’s statement that at Luke 5” the &v. 
Hieros. renders dvO@pwmos tis by W3 NWI (barnasha@ 
hadh). What is so rendered is not av@pwros tus, but 
the vocative, dv@pwre, which, quite according to correct 
usage, is rendered in Aramaic by the emphatic. But, 
at Luke 15! (5 for 15 is a misprint of the Eucyc. Bib/.), 
avOpwtos tis is rendered by 19 W272 (darnash hadh). 


APPENDIX C 223 


As regards the’ titular use of “Son of Man” in 
our Greek Gospels, it does not in the least affect the . 
view, which, following mainly Fiebig, I have taken 
in Lecture IV., to point out, that, so far as is known, 
none of the Aramaic translations of the Gospels 
rendered 0 vids Tod avOpeémov by the simple darnasha’. 
In the Av. Hzeros. the equivalent used is chiefly 72 
N21 1 (Greh dhé gabhr@), lit., “his son that of the 
man”; but sometimes the extraordinary form, 7 73 
NwIna (dreh dhé bharnisha@), lit.. “his son that of the 
son of man,” appears. In the view, advocated in 
Lecture IV., it is allowed that the titular “Son of 
Man” of our Gospels is true only of the mznd of 
Jesus, who, when He used the third person in speaking 
of Himself, always thought of the glorious Figure in 
Dane 7") It could not, in the nature of the case; 
and in the immediate intention of Jesus, express the 
average understanding, or rather want of under- 
standing, of His words, on the part either of the 
multitude or the disciples. Yet the titular rendering 
in the Gospels zs true to the main fact of the Gospel 
history, namely, Jesus’ consciousness of Himself, as 
the Man of prophecy, the Head of the Final Kingdom, 
to whom, on His own behalf and that of His brethren, 
all power was given. Once this truth was attained, 
it was felt, by Aramaic-speaking as well as other 
Christians, that it ought to be preserved by some 
such terminus technicus as the 6 vids tod avOpwrrov 
of the Greek Gospels. Naturally, there was some 
difficulty in finding a good equivalent. It is hardly 
an exaggeration to say that the expression “Son of 
Man,” used as a title and applied to one individual, 
is an unnatural expression in every language under 





224 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 


the sun. But, perhaps all the more on this account, 
it has been felt by Christians that this unique phrase 
corresponds to the unique fact of Jesus. Breh dhé 
gabhr@ is a literal translation, in the Aramaic of the 
second century, of 6 vids tod avOpmmov. If some 
preferred the extraordinary form breh dhé bharnasha, 
the reason may have been, partly, the desire to avoid 
seeming to imply that Jesus was the son of some 
particular man (so Schmidt), and, partly, the desire 
to preserve a literary contact with the dar "nash of 
Dan. 7%. I make Lietzmann welcome to the assump- 
tion that, even in the time of Jesus, the simple ex- 
pression, Jarnasha, could not have been understood 
as a title, and I do not share the anxiety of Driver to 
prove that dreh dhé ’nadsh@ is at least a grammatical 
possibility and may have been used by Jesus. My 
thesis is: that Jesus used the indefinite expression, 
but that, inevitably and in due time, He stamped it 
with the definiteness of Himself. 


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